High School of Demon Hunting

Chapter 1425: Chapter 172: The Mayfly Crowd

Land of Desolation, 2009, early June.

Despite its name, the place is verdant and full of life. Palm trees and cacti accompany each other beside rugged boulders, tulips and larches snuggle for warmth, with desert roses and silk floss trees growing in the sand and red willows and camel thorns in the puddles. The night-blooming cereus unfolds under the blazing sun, while the vegetarian pitcher plant and peat moss exude their sweet nectar, feeding the passing ants and aphids.

A little white rabbit, holding a pig’s trotter, strolls past a group of grazing wolves, its mouth greasy from gnawing bones. Not far away, its companion, a slender deer, is aggressively scolding a bear for dirtying its hooves. The bear cradles its head and quietly enjoys the deer’s hooves, not daring to make a sound.

After landing with the Mist Captain, Nikita is greeted by such a nostalgic scene.

Yes, a nostalgic scene.

Back when she was a proper Wizard, it was hard to imagine Witch Demons living in such a fairy-tale-like setting. She had pictured them dwelling in an icy wasteland, with a desert of bones underfoot and a forest of aggrieved souls and congealed blood before their eyes.

Eight Night Qi horses pull a large Pumpkin Car, speeding across the field, with only the sound of wind and the melodious jingle of bells from the grass audible to the ear.

The Pumpkin Car finally comes to a stop outside a three-story white tower.

This is the Mage tower of the Witch Demons.

Outside the tower, many stalls are scattered about, with vendors who are Witch Demons from the Tower, both old and young, mostly dressed in black robes, their goods not much different from those found in the market of Black Wizards, such as ghost flags, Guest Spirits, dominoes, Painted Skins, bloodstained cards, stained nooses, shriveled heads, dead man’s fingernails, Hand of Glory, and so on.

Here, a Wizard’s blood is bottled by age and gender, while corpse oil is made into candles of different colors according to the level of cultivation. At first glance, aside from a slightly sinister air around the stalls, there’s hardly any surge of gore.

Nikita lowers her gaze and follows behind the Mist Captain, heading towards the Mage tower.

Many piercing eyes follow her.

Many Old Witch Demons eye the neck of the Female Demon with ill intent, as if considering where to strike for an easier kill. This oppressive atmosphere gives her an eerie chill.

The first floor of the Mage tower is spacious and empty, a huge classroom.

Floor-to-ceiling windows surround it, each over ten meters tall. Hanging between them are massive murals, rumored to be made from Giant hide, but Nikita knows this is just hearsay. It’s not that the murals are not made from human skin; it’s just that they are not from Giants, but patched together from the skin of Ordinary Wizards.

Giant skin is too tough to be processed into scrolls.

Far from the entrance, there’s a huge blackboard and a massive lectern.

Between the door and the lectern, the rows of tiered seats are closely packed, with what seems to be all the young Witch Demons from the entire World gathered here.

An Elder Wizard sits behind the lectern, in front of the blackboard, teaching these young Witch Demons about their future.

He is very large, almost like a Giant, and even just sitting cross-legged behind the lectern, his back reaches the ceiling, forcing him to lower his head, his white beard cascading down to the floor.

His voice is deep, echoing throughout the classroom:

”...After sleeping in the mud for three years, struggling in the water for another three, mayflies finally undergo their final transformation and soar into the sky, yet they can only fly for half an hour. That is the most brilliant and dazzling moment of their lives.”

”The mayflies that emerge first are immediately captured by birds, by bats, by any predator craving their flesh. But because there are so many mayflies, it doesn’t take long for their swarms to grow so vast that birds can no longer make any impact on them.”

”At this time, they will calmly seek out the safest and most comfortable places to reproduce. They shed their last layer of skin, their previously transparent wings begin to sparkle with a resplendent, ethereal blue hue, and their abdomens extend a long, beautiful tail thread... The two most important concepts in this story are ’accumulation’ and ’balance’.”

”Predators are too powerful for any mayfly to resist; there are too many mayflies for the predators to completely annihilate. But without six years of accumulation, the mayflies would find it hard to take to the skies and form the ’mayfly throng,’ to ensure their own safety...”

”Mayfly throng, that’s a good term, heh heh.”

The Mist Captain’s deep laughter echoed in the classroom, interrupting the Old Witch Demon’s lecture, and even shook the tall French windows nearby, making them tremble with trepidation:

”...But you only tell these children that mayflies can triumph through numbers, without mentioning that after their transformation into flying insects, they have no mouths, no stomachs, cannot eat any food, nor can they digest any food. Their glorious half-hour entirely relies on the energy accumulated while foraging at the river bottom during their nymph stage... That energy is only enough to sustain their flight in the sky for half an hour.”

The young Witch Demons in their seats initially wanted to scold this impolite guest, but soon, they all lost the ability to speak under the overwhelming aura of the Big Sea Monster, tightly holding onto their Law Books, trying their best to maintain a clear and undisturbed mind.

”SILENCE!!!”

On the podium, the Elder Wizard forcefully slapped his teaching materials, and the heavy sound waves arose from the lectern, colliding head-on with the Mist Captain’s laughter.

The French windows finally ended their duty, shattering to dust under the confrontation of the two formidable beings, revealing the dark, empty void outside. The murals between the windows swayed like tree crowns in the storm, struggling to hold their ground.

The young Witch Demons gasped for air, taking this rare opportunity to transform into wisps of smoke and disappear between the seats, escaping the scene. This was not an event they could intervene in.

Nikita shared the same thought as those young Witch Demons, but she could not leave.

Because the Captain still stood in front of her.

The Captain had not yet spoken.

She could only hide in the shadow of the Captain, hugging her arms, shivering, clutching the ribbon tied around her wrist tightly, cursing herself a hundred times in her heart for always thinking about leaving the ship.

How safe it was to stay on board!

Not until the young Witch Demons had left the classroom one after the other.

Did the Old Witch Demon on the lectern slowly raise his head, revealing a face full of wrinkles. To make this movement, his figure slightly shrank, but the aura around him grew even more oppressive. The entire space seemed to tremble with his weight, faint crackling sounds, like that of glass fracturing, filling the air:

”State your purpose, Foggy.”

”I only wish to assist you in expanding the number of the mayfly throng,” the Mist Captain, with no one else present, showed a rare slickness: ”...isn’t it your responsibility to bring more and more Wizards under the Glory of the True Ancestor, Ulrich?”