What Witch? This Alchemist is Breaking Bad!

An hour later, Leon and Rena finally walked out from the opened Hidden Chamber.

The Demonic Wolf and the Doppelganger were in a state of cursed petrification; they would not die anytime soon, so Leon left them alone for the moment.

As they passed through the passage, Rena staggered slightly.

Leon reached out to support her.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. My legs are just a bit sore.” When Rena said this, her eyes fixed directly on Leon, tinged with faint resentment.

“What’s wrong? Still hurts?” Leon asked cautiously.

“It’s fine. It’s not as painful as I imagined————” Rena muttered softly.

“But don’t you think it lasted too long? The door had already opened during the first round————”

“Sorry.” Leon smiled apologetically.

“But you didn’t tell me to stop either.”

“Pervert.” Rena muttered under her breath and lifted her foot to lightly kick Leon’s calf.

After thinking for a moment, she suddenly recalled something.

“Right, I need to hurry and prepare a potion!”

“What potion?” Leon asked instinctively.

Rena hesitated slightly before replying, “It’s———— the one used for contraception.”

This world had not yet invented universally applicable contraceptive medicine, but among Mana-based Magical Potions, there were formulas capable of achieving such an effect.

Most Witches and even some apothecaries within the Underworld had mastered them.

They were said to be quite reliable, with low side effects, though expensive to produce.

Even so, demand in the market remained high.

It was one of the flagship products in the Magical Potion trade.

After Leon inherited Potter’s market, he had sold this type of product as well.

Among the Witch materials Rena had inherited from her grandmother were many Magical Potion formulas, and this was one of them.

Leon froze for a moment upon hearing this, still pondering what to say when Rena sensed it.

With a complicated expression, she spoke first.

“Leon, for now, we can’t————”

Hearing this left a bitter taste in Leon’s heart, but he knew Rena was right.

There was no doubt that he and Rena truly loved each other.

What had happened in the Hidden Chamber, though triggered by circumstance and coincidence that pierced the final veil between them, was something they had both long understood would come eventually.

And once they reached this step, marriage naturally came to mind—along with children and a lifetime together.

Leon was twenty-one this year; Rena was seventeen.

In the Empire, they were both of marriageable age.

But their current situation did not allow it.

They were engaged in dangerous undertakings, and far from withdrawing, they were sinking ever deeper into them.

In such circumstances, if they had a child, could they truly provide that child with a decent future?

At present, let alone having children—even marriage required careful consideration.

Sally was still detained in the Inquisition.

Melissa was still studying in the Reformatory.

Though their case had supposedly been closed, if the two of them—who were ostensibly unrelated on the surface—were to publicly marry, it would surely arouse suspicion if discovered.

Rena had once offered him such a choice: to leave everything behind and flee together, to depend solely on one another from then on.

If they had chosen that future back then, they truly could have married, had children, and remained together for life.

But Leon had personally severed that option, choosing instead this perilous path of staking everything to seize power and wealth in order to save everyone.

And Rena had chosen to accompany him down that road.

Reexamining his choice now, Leon understood even more clearly that the happiness once possible for ordinary people seemed very far away from them now.

Yet it was not entirely impossible to reclaim it someday.

“Once we get through this hurdle, there will always be a way in the future,” Leon said softly.

Even in this line of work, it was not impossible to wash one’s hands of it and retreat unscathed.

Since they had already made their choice, there was no turning back.

That past choice had seemed beautiful, but in truth, it would have meant carrying the guilt of sacrificing Sally together, waiting for time to dull it.

They had decided to save everyone together.

There could be no retreat.

“Mm.” Rena understood Leon’s thoughts and responded softly.

“What materials does the formula require? Are we missing anything here?” Leon adjusted his mindset and asked her.

“It’s fine. We should have everything here.” As she spoke, Rena frowned slightly.

“Compared to that, ever since we came out, I’ve felt like something isn’t right.”

“You’re still feeling unwell?” Leon asked with concern.

“Not my body—my magic,” Rena replied.

“Ever since we came out, my Mana has been surging nonstop. It won’t calm down at all.”

“You too?” Leon asked, surprised.

“You too?” Rena looked back at him in astonishment.

Once someone received a Witch’s Blessing, the recipient could begin sensing the existence of Mana within their body and control it to a certain extent.

It felt like a hidden energy latent within one’s consciousness—once set into motion, it flowed through the body like a warm current.

Controlling Magical Beasts or activating a Blessing ability both required circulating Mana.

Most of the time, Mana remained in a dormant state.

But now, both Leon and Rena felt the Mana within them surging on its own, as though it had developed its own will and grown restless.

At first, they had assumed it was because they had only just tasted forbidden fruit and their bodies and minds had yet to settle.

But from the moment they left the chamber until now, the condition had not eased—on the contrary, it seemed to be intensifying.

They exchanged glances and both sensed that something about this state was unnatural.

Leon noticed the Moilai Altar not far away and the pillar of light surging up from its center.

He shifted his attention toward his perception of the Labyrinth, and the situation within the temple immediately surfaced in his mind.

He now realized he could clearly sense what was happening inside the Hidden Chamber, and the distribution of Mana throughout the entire temple had become far clearer.

Originally, the Labyrinth’s Mana had originated from the pillar of light rising from the Vertical Shaft Altar, then circulated around the altar in a specific pattern within the temple before slowly diffusing outward.

But now, the distribution of Mana had changed.

Simply put, the Mana surging from the pillar of light was continuously converging toward two locations—him and Rena.

The Labyrinth’s Mana was injecting itself into their bodies on its own.

No wonder the Mana within them had begun surging autonomously.

“What’s going on?” Leon’s breathing grew rapid.

As the rush of Mana within him intensified, he felt his body growing feverish.

This sensation of Mana surging was not unpleasant—in fact, it felt rather good.

His entire body felt as though it had been injected with a stimulant.

Could this be related to the ritual they had completed inside the Hidden Chamber?

At that thought, a tingling sensation suddenly sprouted from his bones and spread into his muscles.

His body began trembling involuntarily.

His joints crackled loudly.

To his astonishment, he felt his line of sight rising by nearly twenty centimeters.

Looking down instinctively, he realized it was not the ground that had risen—his body had grown taller.

At the same time, he heard Rena’s startled cry.

“Leon!?”

Under Rena’s astonished gaze, Leon’s body began growing at a visible rate.

His bones lengthened, his muscles swelled into extraordinary strength, nearly tearing through his clothes.

His head elongated and reshaped.

Soft gray-blue and white fur sprouted from his skin all over his body.

His teeth lengthened and sharpened, transforming his face into one resembling a gray wolf.

While staring in shock at Leon, Rena also felt her own body undergoing a kind of rebirth—though not as violently as his.

“What am I————” Leon began, only to find his voice had become unusually rough.

He looked at his hands.

His palms had grown thick and large, the backs and fingers covered in gray-blue fur.

His nails had turned into sharp claws, which he found he could retract at will.

He touched his face and confirmed that his body had taken on a beast-like appearance.

“This is———— a werewolf!” Rena exclaimed as she examined him.

“Leon, you’ve turned into a werewolf!”

A werewolf—one of the common forms of magical transformation.

It was said that once a Witch reached a certain stage of growth, she could gain the ability to transform her body into a Magical Beast form, becoming a demonized humanoid with beastly traits.

The most common were beastkin such as werewolves, as well as blood kin, serpent maidens, mermaids, harpies, and so on.

Legends even spoke of powerful Witches capable of transforming into dragonkin—half Magical Beast, half enchantingly beautiful woman.

Such images frequently appeared in folklore.

Some rare Magical Potions were said to allow ordinary people to temporarily transform into Magical Beasts, though Rena had never seen one.

But Leon had clearly undergone Magical Beast transformation on his own.

And according to the materials she had studied, this was a power only some Great Witches who had achieved a leap in growth could possess!

And now Leon had suddenly awakened such power?

No—not suddenly.

It was clearly related to the ritual just now!

Leon finally managed to steady himself slightly from the shock of his bodily transformation and turned his gaze toward Rena.

“Rena————”

He stopped mid-sentence, once again falling into stunned silence.

“What’s wrong?” Rena sensed something was off in his reaction.

“Rena, your appearance too————” Leon raised a thick finger and pointed at her.

“Your head—and your back!”

Though not as exaggerated as Leon’s change, Rena’s figure had also grown.

She had become taller, more exquisitely proportioned, her skin smoother, even her facial features subtly refined.

Both her eyes had turned a bewitching deep violet.

But the greatest changes were the pair of horns that had grown from her head—identical to those of demons in artwork—and the bat-like wings that had torn through her clothes from her back.

Shifting her attention behind her, Rena was startled to feel something extending from her tailbone, emerging beneath the hem of her skirt—a tail, which she could move at will.

“What is this?” Rena screamed.

Leon had seen such a creature in certain works before and immediately answered, “A succubus.”

Rena had also taken on a Magical Beast form.

And her form was———— a succubus.