Chapter 184: Chance Encounter in the Jungle

"Pups, you dare come after me?!" The Ghost Witch’s eerie cackle echoed through the jungle. Just as a Warg Mount was about to swallow her whole, immense power erupted from her seemingly small, withered body.

Faintly, Ron thought he heard something on the Ghost Witch shatter.

"This old hag may be far from her prime, but dealing with you lot is still a piece of cake!" The Ghost Witch revealed her true form. With a pair of iron claws, she forced open the Warg Mount’s jaws and violently tore them apart.

"Come on! Don’t you wolf pups love old, tough meat? Then come and have a taste!"

"She’s so strong!" Constance’s eyes widened. She glanced at Sera, who was locked in a fierce battle with three Warg Mounts. ’She might even be as strong as Sera...’

"You’re thinking too much," Aive scoffed. "Sera couldn’t compare to the Ghost Witch unless she’s enhanced by Giant Transformation Magic. No matter how strong she is, she’s still human."

"I wouldn’t be so sure. Polly used an item just now," Ron said. He took out the ice-blue Gemstone. After casting Water Creation Magic with the Ring of Life, he activated Water Manipulation and drowned the three Warg Mounts surrounding Sera. "Alright, where’s the leader? None of these on the ground look the part."

"It got away," Delaford said. He lit an arrow with a torch, drew his bow, and shot it off in one direction. "After it!"

"These things are extremely vengeful. If we don’t want it tailing us for months, we have to kill it now!"

"I’ll cut it off!" Silvia was instantly enveloped in a silvery-white mist. A second later, she reappeared more than ten meters away. "Hounds, time to hunt!"

The massive Warg Mount leader seemed to sense the danger and dodged preemptively. Even so, a Night Howling Hound materialized from the Astral Plane and found its mark.

The panicked Warg Mount leader was immediately bitten on the flank. Unlike the attack of a frenzied beast, the Night Howling Hound’s bite wasn’t biological. Instead, it possessed a far more bizarre Trait: it directly tore through the mental defenses of prey gripped by fear!

"AWOOO—" The Warg Mount, which might have otherwise escaped with its wounds, felt a sharp pain in its head. It managed only a single, wretched howl before its body went limp, collapsing to the ground as if its bones had dissolved.

"It seems they’re quite useful against wild creatures," Yelena said, retracting her Thorn Chain. She knew firsthand how strong these hounds were.

"I’m more surprised you weren’t afraid when you first met them," Silvia said, leaning on her Walking Stick. She glanced at the Shadow Spirit, then shot Ron a reproachful look.

"You shouldn’t have let her out, much less given her a weapon."

"Hey, you’re not planning to get rid of me now that I’ve served my purpose, are you?" Yelena protested, showing off a new wound on her arm. "I pulled my weight just now."

"That’s true," Constance said, handing her broken sword to Victoria. "I would have been in real trouble back there without her."

"You just refuse to switch weapons," Aive said, pursing her lips. "I don’t get it. What’s the appeal of having to repair your weapon after every single fight?"

"If you have things to say, save them for after we leave," the Ghost Witch, once again disguised as an old woman, grunted. "If we dawdle until daybreak, we’ll be facing more than just a pack of wargs."

Only one of her two redcaps remained. It was currently pulling the iron boots off its fallen companion’s feet and putting them on its own.

Redcaps were said to "sprout" from the blood of their victims, but judging by the fact the Ghost Witch made no move to replenish her ranks, the process likely wasn’t so simple.

"And here I thought you were supposed to be tough," Sera grinned. "Turns out you’re nothing special!"

Though the surviving redcap maintained its violent, bloodthirsty nature, it was now alone and outmatched. All it could do was snarl at Sera, unable to utter a single threat.

Thanks to an alchemy pack that served as a Magic Container, Ron and the others were incredibly thorough as they cleaned up the battlefield. They collected as much as possible: pelts, meat, bones, and even blood. If the organs weren’t so difficult to preserve, they probably would have taken those, too.

The consequence of their thoroughness came the next day. Once they were far from the site of the attack, an earth-shattering, furious roar echoed from behind them.

"An Owl Bear," Polly said, gleefully gnawing on a raw warg heart. "It must be furious. Who picks a carcass clean, bones and all?"

"Probably a Mire Throat Monster," the Vampire Descendant said, clutching a newly filled bag of "water." "We didn’t leave a single bone. We gave them all to you."

Rather than stewing them, the Ghost Witch could obviously put the bones to much better use, crafting them into all sorts of strange and grotesque implements.

"Don’t think I’m hoarding them!" Polly glared at her. "At our current pace, we’ll reach our destination in a few days. I need to make enough Protective Talismans—even for me, the energy of the Abyss isn’t entirely safe!"

For the remainder of their journey, perhaps because the stench of blood clinging to the group was so thick, almost no beasts or monsters targeted them. Instead, a few miniature Dragon Species began to follow them curiously from the shadows, showing neither hostility nor familiarity.

"Those little ones are Pseudo Dragons. I’d be more than happy to take one as my Magic Pet," the Ghost Witch said, averting her gaze as she handed a warg-bone talisman to Ron. "Unfortunately, we don’t see eye to eye."

"They won’t tolerate being treated with malice, and you will likely never understand that." Silvia was the complete opposite. She could easily coax over two or three of the little creatures, which looked like miniature red dragons, with a small piece of bread, feeding them as if they were pigeons.

"Unfortunately, they have no interest in becoming my Magic Pet, either. I’m quite fond of their gentle nature, their Telepathy, and their resistance to Magic."

"That’s a real shame." Ron also tried to entice a Pseudo Dragon over with food, but the creatures only raised their venomous tail stingers at him, much to his dismay.

’Why?’

"If you really want to win one over, you should have me, the Ghost Witch, and Yelena leave," Delaford said, making a Ghost Face at two nearby Pseudo Dragons. "They must not see you as good people, either, on account of us."

At his words, the Pseudo Dragons in the woods burst into a clamor, chattering with animal-like cries as if sharing their opinions.

"They can understand Common Language and Dragon Language, but they can’t speak," Silvia explained. "So, aside from Telepathy, they communicate using the sounds of other animals. A rough gurgle represents pleasure, while a hiss means an unpleasant surprise. A bird-like chirp signifies desire, and a roar often indicates displeasure and anger."

Aive’s expression was odd. "Er, if my ears aren’t deceiving me, they’re hissing, right?"