Chapter 343: Thorns: An Encounter with the Thorn Witch
“Kesuye, what happened to you?!”
Everly stared at the merman before her in shock.
Just one day ago, he had been an exceptionally beautiful merman, with fair skin, delicate features, and an innocent, guileless air that came from never having seen much of the world. If someone had taken him to a film set, he might even have landed a role as a beautiful “vase”.
But after just one day apart, the merman had been reduced to a battle-damaged version that was only about 70% intact.
A large purple-blue bump had swollen up on his forehead, the corner of his mouth was split and crusted with dried blood, and his body was covered in injuries of all sizes. Even his smooth, supple tail had not escaped unscathed, with numerous deep scratches gaping across its surface.
This was extremely unusual, because Kesuye had an extraordinarily strong regenerative ability. Ordinary injuries usually healed in no time at all.
“The witch… beat me up.” Kesuye lowered his head, looking utterly dejected. “I found Grant… out at sea. I wanted to help Everly… eat him, but the witch was too strong…”
“You ran into Grant? You attacked him? So it really was you—the killer whale the fishermen saw during the day, right?”
Everly had already suspected that the killer whale reported by the fishermen was Kesuye. For one thing, both the killer whale and Kesuye had the appearance of an orca, and even their sizes were about the same. For another, like many wild animals, Kesuye was territorial.
This was a habit they had only discovered recently.
While their boat was tangled in a fishing net and they had stopped to inspect it, Everly had encountered a pod of dolphins.
Thanks to Lamia’s blessing, she had a strong affinity with marine life. When the dolphins saw Everly, they began calling excitedly and swam over to the yacht, circling around it. Every now and then, they leaped out of the water, mischievously showing Everly their streamlined bodies.
“Woooo—!”
Just then, a deep whale call came from beneath the sea.
Everly looked toward the seabed and discovered that Kesuye had somehow reverted to his giant whale form. He swam over to the pod of dolphins, his enormous body forming a stark contrast with the small dolphins. With a sweep of his tail, he kicked up a huge splash that sent the entire pod flying.
“Eek, eek!”
The dolphins were sent tumbling in all directions. By the time they finally managed to steady themselves, Kesuye had already made a circuit around them and was charging his chubby body straight toward them.
“Click, click!”
Terrified by the completely merciless giant, the dolphins scattered and fled, swimming far away and never daring to approach Everly’s boat again.
As for Kesuye, after chasing the dolphins away, he contentedly rolled over and floated leisurely with the waves for a while. It was only when some seabirds mistook him for carrion and landed on him that he suddenly flipped over, opened his mouth in a threatening display, and scared the birds into squawking frantically.
After checking the control panel, Everly went out onto the deck and curiously asked Kesuye why he had done that.
The giant whale let out a soft “whimper,” then transformed back into his merman form on the spot. Clinging to the side of the boat with both hands, he told Everly with an utterly innocent expression that he simply didn’t like those dolphins.
“I don’t like them. I don’t want them around here. They’re kind of an eyesore.”
It was the first time Kesuye had so bluntly expressed such a negative emotion.
Everly realized from this that although Kesuye had a humanoid form, he had retained a wild side and possessed a strong sense of territory. He didn’t like having other large marine creatures around him.
If that was the case, then if there really were another killer whale around the island, it should have been driven away by Kesuye. There was little chance it could have remained in the vicinity.
The facts proved Everly’s guess correct: the killer whale the fishermen had seen was Kesuye.
According to his account, that afternoon, he had been swimming in the nearby waters in his merman form, looking at the coral, when he suddenly heard a familiar voice coming from the surface of the sea.
Kesuye had an excellent memory. Not long ago, he had just recalled his encounters with Grant Megan from the time when he was still an embryo, so when he heard that voice, he recognized its owner almost immediately.
“I knew Everly had been looking for him. I wanted to help you, so I charged into him.”
The initial attack went extremely smoothly.
Grant’s ship was completely unprepared. Kesuye rammed it so hard that it rocked violently from side to side, nearly capsizing. Even when the mercenaries aboard fired into the sea, the resistance of the water meant that, at most, they could only graze the giant whale’s skin. Against his powerful regenerative ability, it was nothing.
Kesuye took several bullets head-on, then seized an opportunity to leap out of the sea and eat the mercenaries.
After the mercenaries were killed, several psychics came rushing out of the cabin.
“They hit me with strange objects and said things I couldn’t understand. It was a little noisy and a little painful. My chest suddenly went numb, and I couldn’t breathe… I didn’t like it, so I ate them too.” With an utterly innocent expression on his face, Kesuye calmly uttered words that were chilling to think about.
Everly: “…”
She didn’t even want to think about whether there might have been any innocent people among them. In that situation, it was kill or be killed, so there was no point dwelling on it. But was Kesuye’s appetite perhaps a little too good? How could he eat every random thing he came across…
One psychic after another was taken out by Kesuye, and the number of people aboard the ship dwindled steadily. In the end, the only person left protecting Grant was the black-haired, curly-haired girl who had appeared in Alice Town.
The yacht rocked and tossed in the waves, yet the girl stood steadily on the deck as though she were walking on solid ground.
Facing the enormous creature in the sea radiating fierce killing intent, she showed not the slightest trace of fear. She simply stood there in silence, her pitch-black eyes looking down coldly at Kesuye in the water.
“‘Blackthorn bears witness to the ancient oath; beneath the laurel lie buried the bones and blood of witches. Awaken, Thorn Wasteland—may these thorns pierce the throats of my enemies!’”
A cryptic, tongue-twisting Latin incantation rang out. The girl raised her hand and used the thorn-shaped necklace around her neck to pierce her fingertip.
Bright red blood dripped from her fingertip onto the deck. In an instant, it transformed into red threads resembling a spiderweb and rapidly spread outward.
Like veins, the threads burrowed deep into the metal hull, pulsing rhythmically. Wherever they passed, the enormous yacht groaned and twisted out of shape. Dense metal thorns sprouted outward from the flat deck, while the cabin broke apart and transformed into coils upon coils of thorn-covered vines. They wrapped around Grant and the girl, forming a gigantic metallic cocoon that completely sealed the two of them inside.
The most astonishing transformation, however, occurred in the sea. When the bloody threads seeped into the water, all the surface seawater within a radius of more than ten meters around the drop of blood changed shape as well, transforming into transparent thorny vines that roared and surged toward Kesuye in the water.
It was the first time Kesuye had encountered an enemy so powerful.
The thorns surrounding the two were both the sharpest spears and the strongest shields. No matter how he attacked, he could not break through them. Instead, he ended up covered in injuries himself.
Even more terrifyingly, the thorns possessed the ability to drain blood and suppress healing. Unless Kesuye destroyed them all in a single attack, no matter how many he broke, they could regrow by absorbing his blood—and could even become tougher than before.
As for Kesuye, the thorns’ healing suppression prevented his wounds from recovering normally. For the first time in a long while, he ended up covered in injuries, with more and more blood flowing from his body.
As the battle continued, he heard the witch chanting another spell and preparing to launch a new attack. Kesuye immediately decided not to stay any longer. He plunged into the deep sea and, using the ocean as cover, escaped the battlefield.
“So that girl was a witch? No wonder…”
Everly had found it strange before that a young, beautiful girl would be by Grant’s side—come on, he was the villain of a horror movie! Based on the patterns Everly had summed up after watching countless movies, horror-movie villains simply weren’t allowed to have girlfriends. And even if they did, the girlfriend had to die early, with her tragic death providing the villain with a reason to take revenge on society and destroy the world.
Yet, somehow, a girl had appeared at Grant’s side, and the two of them even seemed quite close.
If the girl was a witch, then everything made sense.
Either Grant had deceived her in order to exploit her abilities and entered into a relationship with her, or Grant and the girl simply shared the same twisted nature and were a villainous couple to begin with. Similar setups had appeared in other horror movies, such as Dance with the Devil and The Rental, where the villains were a couple. There was also The Skeleton Key, mentioned earlier, in which the villains were a pair of Black witch spouses.
Whether the girl had been deceived or had willingly joined him, the situation wasn’t particularly good for Everly, because that witch was far too powerful.
Even Kesuye had been beaten black and blue by her. If Everly went there herself, she probably wouldn’t even know how she died.
And she had been thinking about sabotaging things? Just how overconfident had she been before… Thinking about how she had actually considered stopping Grant from landing on the island, Everly couldn’t help breaking out in a cold sweat.
“Thank you so much for today. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have known there was such a powerful witch on the other side… How are your injuries? Do you need some medicine?” Everly leaned closer to inspect the swollen bump on Kesuye’s forehead and asked with concern.
Kesuye slowly widened his eyes.
In the reflection of Everly’s pupils, he saw his own magnified reflection.
Weak-looking, ugly, battered and ragged, not handsome at all… He had actually been standing in front of her looking like this for so long!
A powerful wave of embarrassment washed over Kesuye. His face flushed bright red, and with a splash, he sank into the seawater and never resurfaced.
Everly: “?”
After waiting for a long while without seeing Kesuye return, Everly went back into the cabin with a head full of question marks.
Later, after making inquiries through various channels, she spent some money to buy a piece of information from Natalie, the Curse Witch: the witch accompanying Grant was very likely a Thorn Witch.
“Witches of this type can control thorns, and they have no obvious weakness in either attack or defense. Furthermore, because thorns are often associated with spikes, pain, and similar concepts, Thorn Witches possess another trait: they can draw strength from suffering. Whether physical or mental, the more pain a Thorn Witch experiences, the stronger she becomes.”
Natalie advised Everly not to confront the Thorn Witch, because in a certain sense, Thorn Witches were naturally born for battle.
Everly took the advice very seriously.
She obediently abandoned her plan to cause trouble for Grant. In fact, she couldn’t even find out where Grant was, so she couldn’t cause him trouble even if she wanted to. She decided to simply stay by herself and keep a low profile. If necessary, once the island surfaced, she could wait nearby for a while and let Grant and his group go up first.
She had the chameleon skull, so as long as she kept her distance, hiding her tracks shouldn’t be a problem.