6kv Chapter 98 The Witch of Entropy
Chapter 98 The Witch of Entropy
Chapter 97 The Witch of Entropy
The second level of the Tower of Babel, an open area within the Titan Forge.
The midday sun shone down, making the steel floor slightly hot, and the air was filled with the dry smell of heated metal.
"Anna, come here."
Lorraine stood in the center of the open space, with several metal boxes sealed in isolation containers piled at her feet. The Witch's Codex screen in her hand was displaying a complex magic circle diagram that made one's scalp crawl.
Anna jogged over, her steps quick and light, a gray stain still clinging to her face from when she was sorting through her loot.
"Young Master, what's wrong? Do we have to move things again? Victor still has two truckloads left..."
"We're not moving anymore." Lorraine turned off the screen, turned to look at her, and said, "Put down everything you're doing. You only need to do one thing this noon."
Anna tilted her head.
Lorraine pointed to the isolation containers at her feet: "Remember what I told you yesterday?"
Anna paused for half a second, then broke into an excited smile.
"Fourth...fourth-tier advancement?!"
"Hmm." Lorraine crouched down and unlocked the first container. "It's noon, the timing is perfect."
T
The moment the container lid was lifted, a bone-chilling cold mixed with intense magical energy rushed out.
Inside lay a fist-sized, dark blue crystal, its surface covered with fine ice cracks, like a heart dug out of an extremely cold abyss, still faintly beating.
Annihilation Winter: Core Crystal Remains
Top-tier Tier 4 materials that dropped from Modir's corpse.
Anna's breathing quickened, and she clenched her fists, her knuckles cracking.
"Young Master, am I dreaming?"
"You asked me that yesterday." Lorraine didn't even look up as she opened the remaining containers one by one.
Twelve jet-black spikes, with ice-blue barbs at their ends, were neatly arranged in the second box; these were the World-Destroying Ice Spikes.
The third box contained three clumps of dark liquid, as thick as mercury, contained in a special container, constantly churning with the essence of eternally frozen magic.
All of them were top-grade ice-attribute materials plundered from Modir.
Anna stared at those things for a while, then suddenly looked up and asked a question that Lorraine hadn't expected.
"Young Master, after I advance in rank, will I still be able to use fire?"
Lorraine paused for a moment.
He stood up and looked into Anna's eyes.
"No, it's impossible."
Anna's eyelashes trembled.
"The advancement path to the fourth tier is 'Witch of Entropy'."
Lorraine brought up the instructions for the secret manual, and dense text floated between the two on the light screen. He looked at the screen and explained to Anna, "The core logic of the ritual is—to make the ice and fire attributes within your body clash and extinguish them completely."
"Extinguished?" Anna frowned. "The ice and fire are both extinguished? What do I have left?"
"What remains is 'entropy'."
Lorraine drew a line on the screen with his finger. "What is produced after the clash of ice and fire magic is not nothingness, but a higher level of law. Everything has a beginning and an end. Fire will burn out, ice will melt. This process from birth to death is entropy."
"Your new ability is to accelerate this process."
To put it simply—
Lorraine reached out and patted a rusty iron pillar next to him. "Under normal circumstances, this iron pillar might take hundreds of years to completely rot and collapse. But if you touch it, it will experience those hundreds of years in a matter of seconds."
Anna's mouth opened slightly.
"Accelerating decay—" she murmured, "wouldn't that mean everything you touch will rot?"
"That's roughly the idea."
Anna was silent for two seconds, then her eyes lit up with an alarming light.
"What if I touch the city wall?"
"The city walls will age before your eyes over thousands of years, turning from solid stone into a pile of dust."
"How about touching the armor?"
"The steel armor will rust into a pile of scrap metal within seconds."
Anna took a deep breath and unconsciously rubbed her hands together.
His eyes were filled with excitement.
"This ritual is dangerous too," Lorraine glanced at her, "but you seem completely unfazed."
"What's the panic?" Anna chuckled, revealing a row of white teeth. "I wasn't scared at all when the young master made me jump into the fire. It's just ice and fire clashing."
"This is more than that." Lorraine's expression turned serious. "The transition from third to fourth tier is different from before. When you go from first to second tier, you only need to endure the pain; when you go from second to third tier, you need to withstand the tearing force of ice and fire simultaneously. But this time—"
He paused for a moment.
"This time you need to actively destroy your own magic core."
Anna blinked.
"The clash of ice and fire means that two completely opposite forces within your body collide head-on."
Lorraine lowered her voice, "At the moment of impact, all your magic will be exhausted. Your body will experience a vacuum period where there is no magic protection."
How long was that vacuum period?
"According to the calculations in the secret manual, it will take about twelve seconds."
"Twelve seconds?" Anna tilted her head. "That doesn't sound like long."
"Not long?" Lorraine stared at her. "Anna, you are a third-tier witch. Your body has become accustomed to the nourishment of magic. Every blood vessel, every muscle, and every cell depends on magic to function. Once there is a magic vacuum, your body is like a machine that has suddenly been disconnected from its power source."
"Your heart might stop beating, your blood might clot, and you might lose consciousness."
"If you fail to grasp the power of the law of entropy and reconstruct the magic circuit within these twelve seconds..."
He didn't continue.
Anna didn't let him finish speaking.
"Then I'll grab it."
She said this in a very relaxed tone, as if she were casually saying, "Then I'll wash the dishes."
Lorraine stared at her for several seconds.
"Young Master," Anna took a step forward, her tone becoming serious, "when have you ever seen me back down?"
"When you told me to jump into the fire, I did. When you told me to swallow the ice, I did. You said the ice and fire would come at the same time, and I endured that too."
She patted her chest, her voice soft, but every word was delivered with conviction.
"I do whatever you say, I've never been ambiguous about it, and this time is no exception."
Lorraine was silent for a moment, then chuckled softly.
Anna is no longer the little maid who first arrived in this wasteland; even at the very beginning, she already possessed the courage to sacrifice herself.
Moreover, after experiencing so much, here we are now.
"Okay, let's start preparing."
Lorraine crouched down, took out the Witch's Tome from her bosom, and unfolded a light screen, projecting a huge magic circle diagram onto the ground.
The magic array is extremely complex, consisting of three concentric circles, one inside and one outside.
The outermost layer consists of twelve equally spaced anchor points, corresponding to the insertion positions of the twelve World-Destroying Ice Thorns.
The middle layer is filled with densely packed magical patterns, used to guide the energy flow when ice and fire clash.
The most central location is a circular area with a diameter of two meters, which is where Anna will stand.
Lorraine began to inscribe the magic circle.
He guided the power of the lord's talent with the witch's grimoire, and with each stroke of his fingertip, a dark golden pattern would appear on the metal ground.
Anna squatted down and watched, unable to help and unable to do anything about it.
The precision requirements for the magic circle are extremely high. The angle and depth of each stroke are precisely calculated by the secret manual. Even the slightest error could cause the ritual to go out of control.
She just squatted there quietly, her head resting on her knees, her eyes following Lorraine's finger.
But my mind had already drifted off to somewhere else.
Frostwolf City.
Just thinking about those three words made her teeth itch.
She stayed in Frostwolf City for thirteen years.
For thirteen years, she was treated as the lowest servant, and serving tea, water, washing clothes, and folding blankets were just part of her daily routine.
It was common for their food to be cut back; they were only given two meals of thin porridge a day, and when they were so hungry they were dizzy, they would sneak into the kitchen to gnaw on leftover bones.
Being beaten was a common occurrence.
The butler would whip her if he didn't like her, the countess's personal maid would push her down the stairs if she was in the way, and the head steward's son would tease her as a pastime. One winter, he poured a basin of ice water down from the second floor, which landed right on her head, and then leaned on the railing and laughed so hard he almost fell over.
She was only twelve years old at the time.
She stood shivering on the porch, soaked to the bone, with no one to change her clothes or care whether she would freeze to death.
The only person who took off his coat and draped it over her was the young master.
A true young master.
Lorraine.
She still remembers the temperature of that coat.
It wasn't hot, or even warm, because Lorraine herself wasn't wearing much; her coat was so thin it offered almost no protection from the cold.
But it was that thin coat that helped her get through that winter.
"What are you thinking about?"
Lorraine's voice pulled her back to reality.
Anna snapped out of her daze and discovered that Lorraine had already finished carving most of the outer magic circle and was inserting the World-Destroying Ice Thorns into the anchor points.
"I'm thinking—" Anna hesitated for a moment, then slowly smiled, "What kind of expressions will those people have when they see me after I advance to the fourth rank and return to Frostwolf City?"
Lorraine's hands didn't stop: "What kind of expression is that?"
"A look of utter terror." Anna's red eyes reflected the firelight as she spoke bluntly, "Back then, the head steward's favorite saying was, 'Someone like you deserves to spend your whole life cleaning toilets.'"
"When I get to him, I'll see if he can still say those words."
Lorraine scoffed, "If you actually touch him, he won't even have a toilet to clean; he'll just turn into a pile of ashes."
Anna smiled happily.
"Then I'll just touch it lightly, touch his whip. Let him watch as his most treasured whip crumbles to dust in his hands."
The magic circle gradually took shape under Lorraine's guidance.
The twelve world-destroying ice thorns were precisely inserted into the anchor points, and dark blue chill slowly spread along the engravings.
The three clumps of Eternal Freeze Magic Essence were poured into the three energy storage tanks in the middle layer.
The core crystal was placed in the very center of the magic circle, suspended on a small magical support, pulsating faintly.
Lorraine stood up, took a few steps back, and examined the entire magic circle.
A line of green text popped up on the screen—
[The advancement array is ready. Error rate: 0.03%, meeting the safety threshold.]
"Come stand here properly."
Anna took a deep breath, stepped into the circular area in the center of the magic circle, and stood next to the core crystal.
The sunlight shone directly on her head; the midday sun was perfectly aligned.
"Anna." Lorraine stood at the outer edge of the magic circle, her expression calm, but her speech slowed. "After the ritual is activated, the ice and fire within you will be simultaneously stimulated to their limits. Then they will collide."
"You'll feel a sensation at the moment of impact."
"I know, it hurts a lot," Anna chimed in with a grin. "Young Master, you don't need to remind me every time. It's not like it's the first time."
Lorraine shook her head: "It's not just pain. You feel like your body is being hollowed out, completely empty, inside and out. That feeling is worse than pain."
Anna nodded, her smile fading slightly, but the light in her eyes remained.
"Young Master, do you believe me?"
Lorraine paused for a moment.
"You've got it backwards," he clicked his tongue. "The ritual I'm arranging for you should be about whether you believe in me or not."
"Is there even a question?" Anna clenched her fist. "Let's do it."
Lorraine stopped talking nonsense.
He pressed his hand against the activation pattern on the edge of the magic circle, and poured in magic power.
Buzz—
The entire magic circle lit up.
Dark golden light flowed rapidly along the engravings, and the twelve world-destroying ice thorns simultaneously emitted a bone-chilling cold, creating a violent resonance with the fire magic within Anna's body.
Anna's body stiffened abruptly.
She sensed it.
The two all-too-familiar powers within him—the pale fire and the deep blue cold—suddenly began to expand uncontrollably.
As if being pulled by something, two forces surged wildly from both sides of the body toward the center.
They're going to collide.
Anna gritted her teeth.
boom!
A silent explosion.
It wasn't a physical explosion, but an annihilation that occurred deep within the core of her magic.
Ice and fire collided head-on in the very center of her body.
The pale flames and deep blue ice devoured each other the moment they touched, like two trapped beasts fighting in a cage. The fire melted the ice, and the ice froze and extinguished the fire. The melted ice was then ignited by new fire, and the extinguished fire was covered by new ice, cycling, clashing, and canceling each other out.
Anna's body began to tremble violently.
Her skin surface shimmered with alternating pale and deep blue light patterns, like two colors of ink vying for territory in water.
pain.
The kind of pain that cuts right to the bone.
But she didn't call out.
From the moment she first jumped into the demonic fire, she never cried out in pain in front of Lorraine.
It's not about showing off—
She didn't want the young master to worry.
The speed at which ice and fire clash is increasing.
Anna felt like she'd been stuffed into a centrifuge, all her senses blurring as it spun rapidly. Her vision blurred, her ears were ringing, and her mouth tasted metallic.
Then it went out.
It's like someone extinguishing two candles at the same time.
The pale fire disappeared.
The deep blue extreme cold has also disappeared.
The two forces within her that had been burning and frozen since the day she awakened finally fell silent at this moment.
Anna felt as if all the bones had been removed from her body; her knees buckled, and she almost collapsed to the ground.
Vacuum period.
The twelve seconds Lorraine mentioned.
Her heartbeat slowed down.
It's not the kind of slowness that comes from relaxation, but the kind of slowness that comes from functional decline.
One second — Two seconds —
A body without magic is too fragile. The cold wind blew in, and she felt cold, but it wasn't the cold brought by ice-attribute magic; it was the real, tangible cold that an ordinary person would feel standing in the snow.
Three seconds — Four seconds —
My consciousness began to drift.
The world before my eyes seemed to be covered by frosted glass, and Lorraine's figure became blurry.
Five seconds.
She heard Lorraine calling her name.
The sound was very distant, as if it were coming through a veil.
Six seconds.
Something is moving inside my body.
It is neither ice nor fire.
It was a power she had never felt before.
The power was cold, calm, and unhurried, like a slowly flowing black river seeping out from the ruins after the annihilation of ice and fire.
It has no temperature.
It's neither cold nor hot, neither fast nor slow.
But it carries with it an extremely ancient law about "everything will eventually perish".
Anna instinctively reached out to grab it.
Seven seconds.
My fingertips touched it.
The feeling was strange; she suddenly could sense the "lifespan" of all the matter around her.
The metal floor beneath our feet has another three thousand years to live. The stable structure of the world-destroying ice thorn at the edge of the magic circle can be maintained for another one hundred and twenty years.
Water molecules in the air will evaporate after 0.3 seconds.
Everything is coming to an end.
The only difference is the speed.
Eight seconds.
She caught it.
She clenched the black river into her palm, letting it flow down her arm and into her body, surging wildly towards the location where the magic core had once stood.
Nine seconds.
A new core has begun to take shape.
It is no longer ice blue, nor is it pale white.
Instead, it is a deep, almost transparent gray-black.
ten seconds.
The heartbeat has returned.
Eleven seconds.
My heart pounded as if it had been accelerated, beating seven or eight times in a second, clearing away all the stagnation that had been building up in my blood vessels.
Twelve seconds.
Anna suddenly opened her eyes.
All the light on the magic circle exploded at the same moment, the dark golden engravings cracked and shattered, the twelve world-destroying ice thorns turned to dust, and the core crystal completely melted away, turning into a ball of gaseous energy that was completely absorbed by Anna's body.
The shockwave swept outwards from her feet in all directions.
Lorraine was pushed back two steps by the blast wave, raising her hand to block the debris flying towards her.
The wind stopped.
Anna stood in the very center of the magic circle ruins, her clothes still fluttering in the wind.
She looked down at her hands.
Turn your palm over, then over again.
"Young Master."
Her voice trembled slightly, but not from fear.
"I can hear you."
Lorraine brushed the dust off her shoulder: "What did you hear?"
"I can hear everything." Anna's eyes gleamed with a light she'd never seen before. "This floorboards are talking—"
It's telling me how much longer it can hold on.
She bent down and picked up a piece of metal from the ground, holding it in her palm.
The fragment aged visibly between her fingers—the luster of the metal surface faded, rust spread, and the structure loosened. In less than three seconds, a hard alloy fragment turned into a clump of powder, which fluttered out from between her fingers.
Anna stared at the powder, her mouth agape, and turned to look at Lorraine.
"Young Master!"
"I succeeded?! Fourth tier?! Really fourth tier?!"
Lorraine brought up the Secret Codex screen.
It clearly shows above—
【Anna, the Witch of Entropy (Tier 4)】
"A genuine Tier 4 weapon." Lorraine nodded.
Anna paused for a second, then jumped up.
"Hahahaha! Tier 4! I'm Tier 4 now!"
She spun around twice, then rushed over and grabbed Lorraine's arm, hanging on it and swaying back and forth.
"Young master, young master, young master! What I can touch is ruined! What I can touch is ruined!"
Lorraine was shaken until she was dizzy: "Let go, everything you touch now will rot, be careful you don't rot my arm too."
Startled, Anna quickly let go, looked down at her fingers, then at Lorraine's undamaged sleeve, and breathed a sigh of relief.
"That scared me to death—you can control it, right?"
"I can control it." Lorraine rubbed her arm, which was sore from being squeezed so tightly. "The power of laws isn't triggered passively; you have to actively invoke it. However, you've just advanced, and your control isn't stable yet, so be careful when you touch things these next few days."
Anna nodded vigorously.
Victor and Ohm rushed over upon hearing the commotion.
Victor immediately noticed the ruins of the magic circle and the residual energy fluctuations on Anna's body, his old face filled with shock.
"Fourth Rank—Anna, she—"
"You've been promoted," Lorraine said casually.
Victor opened his mouth and swallowed.
Ohm peeked out from behind Victor, his silver eyes flashing: "Sister Anna is amazing!"
Anna grinned and waved at Ohm—then, remembering something, she quickly pulled her hand back.
Lorraine glanced at her, a slight smile playing on her lips.
He turned around, his gaze sweeping across the distant horizon, where the outline of a snow-covered city faintly appeared at the edge of the horizon.
Frostwolf City.
Anna.
"exist!"
"We'll go and build your new Witch's Towers right now. Twenty-four of them."
When the number of Witch Towers a fourth-order witch could possess was revealed, even Lorraine felt a surge of excitement.
Twenty-four fourth-tier witch towers—this represents both a quantitative and a qualitative change.
Anna's eyes lit up.
"Are we about to set off?"
Lorraine did not answer.
He simply gazed in the direction of the distant city, the smile on his lips slowly deepening.