What Witch? This Alchemist is Breaking Bad!

Caron strode deeper into the labyrinth, the fluorescent plants and mushrooms growing along the walls providing him with a small amount of illumination.

He carefully observed his surroundings, pricking up his ears to listen for any movement.

The blessing of the God of War greatly enhanced his senses.

He could see and hear far more clearly than Leon.

Even in a space with such extremely poor visibility, if they were playing hide-and-seek, he held an obvious advantage.

Even so, he did not dare relax his vigilance.

Leon might have been deliberately luring him deeper into the labyrinth.

There could very well be traps here.

“You won’t escape. There’s no way out here.” Caron shouted loudly at an intersection.

“Leon Set, come out now and I can still spare your life.”

After shouting, he frowned slightly.

The spot on his back where Leon had shot him with the gun still carried a faint stinging sensation, both painful and itchy.

At that moment, Leon and Rena were hiding behind a large rock, hardly daring to breathe.

Rena clung to Leon in fear.

Even now, she did not understand why Leon had chosen to hide inside the labyrinth.

She really wanted to ask, but making any sound right now could expose their position.

This labyrinth was not large.

From the former knight order encampment extending inward, there were only three branching paths in total.

One slanted downward into the interior of the mountain.

At its end was a narrow fissure leading underground, which had already been blown up and buried by the knight order.

The other two were each about two hundred meters long, and their far ends both led to exits on other sides of the mountain, but they too had already been destroyed.

In other words, this place had now become three dead ends.

If they continued hiding, once Caron searched each path one by one, he would sooner or later drag them out.

Of course, they could also try to run back while Caron was searching another route, but their footsteps would quickly expose them, and Caron would chase them back even faster.

Even if he failed to block them, he would soon catch up.

More importantly, while Caron could not find them, they themselves could not see Caron’s position either.

Their hiding relied entirely on luck—it was merely stalling for time.

Leon leaned against the rock wall, calming his mind as he waited silently.

If they had run outward along the mountain path earlier, in an open field of view, Caron would have caught them in just a few steps.

Their only way to survive now was to kill Caron inside this labyrinth.

And what he needed right now was nothing but time.

“Not coming out?” Caron held his sword and began probing the way forward as he searched deeper inside.

“If I find you, I’ll break your arms and legs and leave you begging for death! As for that witch you’re trying to protect, I’ll make you watch with your eyes wide open as she experiences every single instrument of torture in the Inquisition’s interrogation chamber!”

As he spoke, he suddenly swung his sword, smashing the edge of a rock.

The crisp sound of metal striking stone echoed through the cave.

Rena heard the sound through the rock wall, and her breathing instantly became disordered.

Leon immediately tightened his grip on her hand, signaling for her not to panic.

Caron’s goal was to use verbal threats to throw them into disarray.

The moment they made even the slightest sound, he would chase them like a beast following a scent.

“You have one last chance…”

Caron continued inward as he spoke.

After taking two more steps, he suddenly felt something was wrong.

He realized that the foot stepping on the ground no longer had any sense of solidity, as if his leg had gone numb after being pressed for too long.

As his leg grew numb, the itching and pain on his back noticeably intensified.

Caron’s expression changed slightly as he suddenly realized something.

“Damn it!”

The sudden tension made his breathing grow rapid.

Once his breathing went out of rhythm, it became difficult to adjust.

A wave of dizziness and nausea suddenly washed over him.

“You bastard! What did you do to me?!” he suddenly roared in fury.

The reaction was obvious enough—he had been poisoned, and it was a highly acute and dangerous poison.

Realizing this, Caron completely panicked.

He quickened his pace and charged deeper into the labyrinth, swinging his sword back and forth to probe the path, trying to drag that damn little bastard out before the poison fully took effect.

“Get out here! You dare ambush me?! I’ll stab a sword through your gut! I’ll gouge out your eyes!!”

Caron shouted in rage, venting desperately.

Otherwise, despair would immediately take hold of him.

But in contrast, the poison’s onset showed no sign of slowing.

On the contrary, his agitation accelerated its effects.

Soon, he staggered, nearly falling.

Caron grabbed the rock wall to steady himself and cursed, “Fuck!”

In horror, he discovered that one of his legs had lost all sensation, and the wound on his back had begun to ache violently—so painful it made him want to carve off a chunk of flesh.

He could only turn around and drag that leg as he tried to retreat.

However, a stiff numbness began to slowly spread throughout his body.

His joints started to feel as if they were rusted, his movements growing slower and slower.

After limping for dozens of meters, the other leg finally gave out as well.

He crashed to the ground with a loud clang, barely supporting himself with his sword.

“Enough!” Realizing the situation was hopeless, he panted heavily, adjusting his breathing as he tried to call out to Leon.

“I lost! I surrender! Let’s renegotiate—give me the antidote! Give me the antidote, now!!”

Hidden on the other side, Leon finally let out a breath of relief.

He helped Rena to her feet and began carefully moving back.

“Go get a lantern.” When they returned to the intersection, Leon said to Rena, while loading fresh ammunition into his gun.

“What happened to him?” Rena asked, still shaken, as she looked toward the tunnel extending deeper into the mountain.

Caron’s shouting kept coming from there, but he could no longer make his way out.

After finishing loading the gun, Leon felt around on his body and took out a test tube.

Inside were a few remaining drops of purple liquid.

Poison extracted from a cockatrice’s venom sac.

Earlier, what he had taken from the table were actually two test tubes—one containing mana, the other containing cockatrice venom.

When Caron demanded that he hand over the items, he secretly poured a bit of mana into his pocket while fumbling, then handed over the test tube containing mana, making Caron think he only wanted to stash away a small amount of mana.

When Caron had his back turned, Leon mixed the mana into the cockatrice venom.

Then, before firing the gun, he poured the venom onto the muzzle.

After the shot, the bullet coated with venom struck Caron.

Caron’s transcendent abilities could block blades and bullets, but he would still suffer superficial wounds.

Rena had once said that magical beast poisons were better described as curses.

They could be activated and intensified with mana, and could not be destroyed by conventional physical or chemical means.

At the time, Leon guessed that if the poison could withstand even extremely high temperatures, then in theory, it could be used to poison bullets.

That said, in such a desperate situation, Leon had no certainty that such a crude poisoning method would work.

But aside from poison, he could think of no other way to defeat Caron.

Fortunately, in the end, it worked.

Because of his work as an Inquisitor, Leon had suffered many times from this kind of toxic onset.

Now he had made Caron experience that pain in full.

Caron soon could no longer support his body.

He struggled to crawl to the rock wall so he could sit leaning against it.

By that point, his back had already become as hard as stone.

Leon finally entered with the lantern, holding his gun and pointing it at Caron.

“Antidote! Give me the antidote… hurry!” Caron forced out the words toward Leon, his tongue already starting to feel numb.

“Tell me how you found me, and where you hid your money. Tell me, and I’ll give you the antidote.”

Leon did not recklessly approach.

Instead, he carefully aimed the gun at Caron’s eyes.

No matter how impervious Caron was to blades and bullets, his eyes were certainly a weak point.

Caron’s poisoning symptoms were likely real, but that did not mean he had completely lost the ability to fight back.

As for a cockatrice venom antidote—Leon, of course, did not have one.

He only wanted to extract as much information as possible before Caron died.

Caron stared at Leon for a while, then suddenly let out a helpless laugh.

“You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you? There was never any antidote, was there?!”

With his experience, a single look into Leon’s eyes told him his ending.

Leon did not deny it.

He simply kept the gun trained on Caron and confirmed, “Was it the old thing from the junk shop who sold me out?”

As for how Caron had tracked him down, this was the only lead Leon could think of.

“You still need to confirm that?” Caron sneered, then the corner of his mouth twitched.

“Damn it… to think I’d fall here!”

He laboriously raised his trembling hand and reached into his coat pocket.

Leon immediately tensed.

“Don’t move!!”

But Caron ignored him, slowly pulling out his pipe.

Under Leon’s stunned gaze, Caron put the pipe in his mouth and tried to fumble for his tobacco tin and tinderbox, seemingly wanting one last smoke before death.

However, his hands soon stiffened to the point of no longer obeying him, and the items fell from his grasp one after another.

“Oh.” He sighed regretfully and looked up at Leon, but Leon did not move.

Leon had no intention of offering this man any deathbed mercy.

If he rashly approached and Caron still had some ability to act, he might snap Leon’s neck with a single movement.

In the end, Caron only forced out a cold smile at Leon, spat out the pipe, and slurred, “Kill me, and you won’t last much longer either… I’ll… be waiting for you…”

The rigidity quickly spread to his face.

His features began to twitch, his smile twisting with them, before finally freezing in that expression.

Cockatrice venom had caused petrification symptoms throughout his entire body.

Finally dead…

Only then did Leon release the breath he had been holding.

Rena, watching from afar, also let out a sigh of relief.

But before they could think about what to do next, Leon suddenly heard a strange echo coming from deep within the cave, like someone softly humming.

Leon instinctively pointed his gun toward the depths of the labyrinth.

“What is it?” Rena asked when she saw Leon’s reaction.

“Didn’t you hear that sound?” Leon asked.

“No!” Rena blinked in confusion.

Leon frowned.

The sound, like a woman’s low humming, continued to ring in his ears and grew increasingly noisy, yet Rena seemed completely unable to hear anything.

Moreover, for some reason, he suddenly felt as if something deep within the labyrinth was staring straight at him.

He could not see anything in the darkness ahead, but the sensation was unmistakable.

His heart began to pound rapidly, cold sweat seeping from his forehead.

He had a premonition—something was about to descend upon him!

Without any warning, a sharp pain appeared in the palm of the hand holding the gun.

“Hiss!” He frowned and set the gun aside to look at his palm.

“Leon, what’s wrong?” Rena hurried over when she saw this.

Then, the two of them saw a purple sigil slowly emerge in the center of Leon’s palm.

As the mark appeared, a strange warm current began to flow gently through Leon’s body.

What is this—Leon instinctively wanted to ask.

The sigil looked strangely familiar to him.

But at that moment, Rena widened her eyes and blurted out before he could speak, “The Mark of Lady Moilai’s Favor?”