“You, come down.”

About five minutes later, just as Saul was about to doze off, the Old Witch finally made her decision.

“You, come down. Perform the transformation experiment on me.”

Saul opened his eyes and propped himself up on the lab table with one hand.

He was a little surprised.

Although no matter what choice the Old Witch made next, he wouldn’t lose out either way, the fact that she actually had the guts to choose to lie down on the experiment table herself was still unexpected.

At the same time, he gained a deeper understanding of the Old Witch’s character.

She was irritable, cruel, and somewhat arrogant.

But she actually dared to lie on the experiment table and let someone else transform her body!

However, the Old Witch wouldn’t entrust her life to a stranger so easily.

She grabbed Saul’s sleeve, yanked it, then suddenly tore off the pinky finger from the end of her hair. She pressed it next to Saul’s own right pinky.

The severed digit, twitching slightly, sprouted several thin fleshy wings from its cut surface. At first, they probed Saul’s palm cautiously, then boldly burrowed in through his skin pores, anchoring the severed digit to the base of his palm.

It was as if he had grown a sixth finger.

Saul curiously wiggled his hand, discovering that he couldn’t control the severed finger.

“What’s the success rate for this transformation experiment?”

The Old Witch lay back on the table, her voice still carrying a slight tremble.

“If you were doing it, maybe fifty percent. If I do it myself, around ninety.”

The Old Witch felt Saul was insulting her.

She turned her head to glare at him darkly. “Since you’re so confident, I’ll give you this chance. Just remember—if I die, that severed finger will soon take your life as well. And I promise you, your death will be a hundred times more painful than mine!”

Saul smiled, no longer paying attention to the extra finger on his hand. “Don’t worry. I’m very familiar with this experiment.”

The Old Witch closed her eyes. From the slight tremble in her eyelids, it was clear she was actually very nervous.

But for some urgent reason, she had chosen to give up collecting more magic materials and instead gamble with her life.

“Maybe it has to do with the Wind Sprite and the Firefly Lord that Oqili mentioned. Could the Old Witch think she’s about to be caught?”

Saul quickened his movements. He definitely didn’t want someone barging in halfway through the procedure.

But just as he placed the small knife against the Old Witch’s forehead, something changed!

The Old Witch, who had been lying motionless with her eyes closed awaiting her fate, suddenly opened them.

She grabbed Saul’s wrist in a flash.

Crack!

Saul heard the sound of his wrist being crushed.

The sharp knife slipped from his powerless grip, sliding along the Old Witch’s skin and leaving a red mark.

That red mark quickly oozed with bright red blood.

Holding his limp wrist, Saul withdrew all expression from his face. “If you’ve changed your mind, you could’ve just said so.”

But the Old Witch only shot him a sideways glare.

In an instant, Saul felt the air around him freeze completely.

It was as if he’d been frozen inside a giant block of ice.

He couldn’t move.

Couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t even shift his eyes.

He was imprisoned in a pocket of air!

But what the Old Witch did next stunned him even more.

She grabbed the sparse braid behind her head with one hand and picked up the fallen knife with the other.

Then, chanting some obscure incantation, she began to slice her own neck—slowly, back and forth—like carving up a steak at a Western dinner table.

A massive burst of blood erupted like a volcanic explosion.

Her head was instantly drenched in red.

Yet her gaze remained calm.

The hand holding her severed head began to move steadily.

She slowly positioned the head over the vat of base material for the perfected body. Then, as if her reaction were dulled, she slowly opened her fingers.

Thud!

The blood-soaked head dropped into the wooden bucket.

At this point, Saul was utterly stunned.

During the endless hours he’d spent experimenting and preparing materials, he had imagined many possibilities—but not once had he considered the Old Witch would decapitate herself and toss her head directly into the experimental material.

“What the hell just happened?”

Saul strained to shift his eyes, trying to see what was happening to the head in the bucket.

But he couldn’t move at all, and from his current angle, he couldn’t see inside.

After the Old Witch’s head landed in the bucket, the hand that had lifted it slowly dropped, and her headless body finally slumped backward limply.

That at last matched what one would expect of a body that had lost its head.

Catching the collapse of her headless body in the corner of his eye, Saul didn’t shift his focus.

He kept staring at the wooden bucket.

His instinct told him something was happening in there.

“Could the Old Witch really survive for a while with just a head?”

Though some Second-Rank wizards had strange bodies—some not even humanoid—they still hadn’t broken free of the shackles of life and death. None could live with just a severed head.

Seeing what she’d done, Saul even began to suspect—Had she already reached the Third Rank?

But if that were the case, there’d be no need for her to risk transformation. She wouldn’t even need to hide from the Firefly Lord and Wind Sprite, who were also Third Rank.

Gradually, Saul began to feel suffocated and dizzy.

The Old Witch had frozen the air around him—he couldn’t even breathe.

If she really died and left the spell unbroken, Saul might actually suffocate to death.

But the diary hadn’t given any warning yet.

Finally, the wooden bucket Saul had been staring at began to tremble. It was as if something inside was undergoing a violent magical reaction.

The reaction grew more intense, and the bucket thudded repeatedly against the metal experiment table, making a loud clattering noise.

At last, just as Saul’s face turned deep purple from lack of air, a small, delicate hand appeared on the edge of the bucket.

The hand was tiny, like that of a baby not even a week old. The newborn skin was slightly translucent and flushed.

After one hand emerged, another reached up to the opposite edge.

Then, with both hands gripping tight, the infantile arms bulged with raised veins from the strain.

“She… she’s coming out!” Saul squinted, silently calculating in his mind.

As the babyish arms pulled upward, the forearms, elbows, and upper arms gradually came into view.

Then came the head.

Unchanged—the same terrifying, eerie face of the Old Witch.

And that was the most terrifying part.

The grotesque face of an old woman—mounted on a baby’s body!

The Old Witch looked down at her hands and body. Her grotesque face finally showed a hint of satisfaction.

Then she looked at Saul, still trapped in the frozen air, and said, “Your modified plan is even better than what I originally imagined.”

She rested her arms on the edge of the bucket, letting her disproportionately large head rest atop them.

She looked rather relaxed.

Maybe because the head was just too heavy.

“As thanks for your contribution, I’ll let you choose how you want to die.”

She waved her baby-like arm and released the air seal around Saul’s head.

Saul inhaled deeply, but since the air around his chest was still frozen, he couldn’t breathe normally—only barely eased the suffocation.

“If you don’t choose, I’ll just let you suffocate. That way, at least you’ll die in one piece.”

Saul cautiously shifted his breathing, raising his eyes to the Old Witch in the bucket.

“So what you really wanted wasn’t body modification, but a full-body swap,” Saul said, trying to stay calm despite the excitement and shock surging within him.

The Old Witch wasn’t interested in discussing her new body. “Looks like you’ve given up that chance.”

But before she could strike again, Saul shook his head. “No, I haven’t given up. Maybe before you execute me, you should double-check—are you sure this body… has no problems?”

The Old Witch instantly became alert. But even after re-examining her body, she still found nothing amiss.

“Trying to fake a threat to protect yourself? You think I wouldn’t detect a First-Rank trick?”

Saul wasn’t flustered. “It’s not a First-Rank trick. It’s the Borderland. Or… maybe you should listen closely—to the sound of water flowing inside that body.”

(End of Chapter)

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