Miss Witch’s Devotion Has Gone… Twisted

Even under the current unusual circumstances, getting a room in a high-end hotel was still no easy feat. The war had little impact on the upper echelons.

So when quite a few senior members of the Bountiful Church decided the situation was turning against them, they fled early, and many of them came here, to the God of Plague’s territory.

As a result, Loren had to spend quite a bit extra to book a place here.

It made Loren miss his old life all the more. If Loren had come here back then, the nobles would have offered him their rooms and let him choose whichever he liked. He wouldn’t have had to show up and pay for anything himself.

The hotel staff didn’t ask much about Loren’s identity, either. So many wealthy people had come here lately that they simply assumed he was another noble fleeing the war.

In a way, those other people had helped Loren keep his identity hidden.

In other places, Loren would definitely have chosen somewhere more discreet. But this was the God of Plague’s territory, and if he wanted somewhere clean, his only option was this sort of high-end hotel catering specifically to foreign visitors.

Even so, after entering the room, Loren used the Ember-Ash Worm’s ability to burn through the entire place.

“Everyone, take a break for a while.”

Loren checked the surroundings and found no danger. Only then did he relax.

“Scarlett, come with me to retrieve the nuclear bombs later. But first, I’m going to run an experiment.

“This is something Noah just developed. It’s called the Mundane Potion.”

Loren took several Mundane Potion smoke grenades out of his outfit and handed them around to everyone.

“Anyone who inhales this will lose all their supernatural abilities. It’s like the Mundane Heart Potion from before, but the conditions for using it aren’t as strict.

“So you can carry one around with you. If it comes in handy, remember to hold your breath before using it.”

Loren gave the Mundane Potion to the witches, leaving out only Scarlett and Panike.

“Master, where’s mine?”

Scarlett looked at Loren pitifully, but he didn’t give in.

“I’m worried you’ll forget to hold your breath and end up hurting yourself.

“As for Panike, she’s strong enough on her own. Carrying this around would be useless for her, and could even cause trouble.”

Panike was probably the one among them who relied most on her Arcane Ability. She absolutely couldn’t afford to lose it.

“All right, now let’s test how the Mundane Potion affects me. If anything goes wrong, protect me for the time being.”

With that, Loren took out the Mundane Potion spray and inhaled.

Loren had guessed that his magic and martial skills would stop working, but his blessings and Tarot cards should still function normally.

But after experiencing the Mundane Potion firsthand, the result did surprise him.

The Mundane Potion had no effect on Loren whatsoever. It hadn’t even interfered with his ability to cast magic.

“Could this bottle be defective?”

Noah was pretty reliable when it came to this sort of thing. It shouldn’t be such a basic mistake.

That left Loren himself as the problem.

To test his theory, Loren simply injected himself with a dose of the Mundane Heart Potion. The result was the same. He was completely unaffected.

“It looks like this stuff simply can’t affect me.”

Loren couldn’t figure out why for now, but it was ultimately a good thing, even if it wasn’t much use to him.

Noah was now utterly loyal to Loren. There was no way he would make something to use against him, so Loren’s immunity to the Mundane Heart Potion didn’t really matter.

“Did you discover anything?”

“I’m immune to the Mundane Heart Potion.”

Loren explained the situation to the witches and began thinking about the abilities he currently possessed. The only one that could possibly cause this effect was the True Sight Eye.

Or...

“Maybe I count as a god now.”

The Mundane Heart Potion had no effect on the Orthodox Gods, and now it had no effect on Loren either. So Loren began to wonder whether he counted as a god now.

To confirm it, he would need Death to judge for him. But Death appeared somewhat randomly, and Loren couldn’t be sure when she would show up.

“At this point, let’s eat first.”

Since they were already in the God of Plague’s territory, Loren had no plans to go out for dinner. The hotel room had cooking utensils, and Scarlett’s space had food and ingredients. They could easily cook for themselves.

It was already getting late. Loren planned to have dinner and look for Noah the next day.

One of Loren’s Puppets was still with Noah, keeping an eye on him, so there was no need to worry that anything might happen.

Loren had hoped Noah might be able to bring him some important intelligence, but Noah never left his home. Even when members of the Plague Church came to see him from time to time, they didn’t share any information with him.

Noah hadn’t done any work for the Plague Theocracy in a long time. Even so, the Plague Church still had to keep him supplied with anything he wanted, just as Loren had done back when he brewed Magical Potions for the King.

The reason was simple. Noah’s invention of fertilizer had shown the Plague Church just how valuable he was, so they continued to support him.

If Noah invented something else, they would make a huge profit. If he didn’t, they still wouldn’t lose anything.

After all, fertilizer had essentially undermined the faith in the God of Bountiful Harvest. It had more or less canceled out the help Loren had given that god during this period, bringing the battle between the Orthodox Gods back to a stalemate.

After dinner, Loren took Scarlett to the Church. They walked right in through the front entrance, and the patrols didn’t notice them.

With Noah here, the Church had a large number of guards, and quite a few Plague Envoys were patrolling as well.

The fact that they could spare so many people during wartime was proof enough of how highly the Church valued Noah.

Loren and Scarlett made their way to Noah’s laboratory. He was still there, diligently conducting experiments.

Even though he was working on nuclear bombs, Noah had no protective gear at all. He simply exposed himself to the radiation.

With the Goddess of Love’s blessing of immortality, this amount of radiation was nothing to him.

“Noah, I’m here to pick up the nuclear bombs.”

Before taking them, Loren informed Noah, then brought Scarlett over to where the bombs were.

Noah had prepared a special place for studying radioactive materials. It was quite far from the nuclear bombs, so the radiation wouldn’t affect Scarlett or Loren.

Noah had even thoughtfully taken that into account.

After Scarlett stored the nuclear bombs in her Life Thief space, Loren prepared to leave. They encountered quite a few Plague Envoys along the way, but everything went smoothly until Loren opened a door and crushed a fly in it.

“Who goes there?”

The fly was part of a Plague Envoy. The moment Loren crushed it, the Plague Envoy sensed something was wrong.

But before he could make any more noise, Loren shoved a Mundane Potion spray into his body and set it off. The Plague Envoy collapsed on the spot.

“It looks like the Mundane Potion can affect the Orthodox Gods’ blessings to some extent.”