Chapter 18: No Wonder She Was So Strong!
Half an hour later, Rhodes slowly closed the potion manual in his hands.
The manual documented a variety of potions, along with detailed notes on each experimental attempt to create new ones. Alchemy was a complex craft. Even master alchemists with decades of experience couldn’t guarantee success every time they brewed potions, let alone when attempting to formulate new ones.
According to the records, in order to perfect the Lycanthropy Potion, the old witch had tested it on over a hundred people in the span of three years. She had failed hundreds of times before achieving a flawless result.
Surprisingly, it doubled as a journal, chronicling the life of the witch named Sangxi. She was born in a village called Starr, to a mother who worked as a prostitute. Sangxi was the result of a failed protection. Her childhood was nothing short of a nightmare, filled with physical and verbal abuse along with several near-death experiences at her mother’s hands, including repeated attempts to drown her.
Everything changed when Sangxi awakened her magical powers. Only then was she able to escape her mother’s control. Unfortunately for her, the existence of witches was taboo in certain southern kingdoms. The ruling elite viewed witches as harbingers of plague and disaster, essentially treating them as demons. Once exposed, a witch would inevitably meet a gruesome death.
So, Sangxi spent decades in hiding, making fleeting friendships and surviving countless hunts. Eventually, she became a potion master. During one of her escapes, Sangxi’s lover was shot dead by a knight’s arrow. Driven by vengeance, she began her research in this remote area to create a potion that could destroy the kingdom. That was how the Lycanthropy Potion came into existence.
This perfected potion not only transformed people into werewolves but also infused their bodies with potent venom. Anyone scratched or bitten by these werewolves would lose their reason and devolve into mindless beasts driven by bloodlust. Unfortunately, though the potion was finally completed after years of struggle, the old witch never got to enact her revenge. She died tragically in Rhodes’s hands.
Her luck was simply terrible. She had picked the wrong target, after all.
As Rhodes had previously deduced, the village chief was merely a puppet controlled by Sangxi. The myth about werewolves fearing fire? It was another lie spread by Sangxi through the chief. She planned to lull the villagers of Mapleleaf Village into complacency. Once the potion was perfected, she would transform them all into werewolves in one swoop. Her ultimate goal was to destroy the decaying kingdom.
Only Little Red Riding Hood’s identity remained an outlier. She wasn’t related to Sangxi at all, to say the least. She was the daughter of Baron Oswede, whose entire family was massacred by werewolves three years ago. Her real name was Brittany, a girl famed for her beauty and poise, known throughout the kingdom.
Even before coming of age, countless nobles had sent proposals her way. Among them were heirs of powerful counts. However, all of them got politely rejected by her father, Baron Oswede.
Sangxi kept Little Red not out of affection, but because she planned to use her to infiltrate the high society, ultimately getting close enough to assassinate the king and spark unrest throughout the kingdom.
To achieve this, Sangxi used various potions daily to modify Brittany’s body. Potions that enhanced flexibility and explosive strength; potions that increased bodily water content; even ones that heightened sensitivity and tightened muscle control.
Sangxi had gone to great lengths to mold Brittany into the ultimate seductress, an irresistible plaything designed to bring any man to his knees. Her goal was for Brittany to climb the ranks of high society using her beauty and wicked mind.
In a world of indulgent, decadent aristocrats, a noblewoman who could dominate in bed would quickly gain fame and admiration, becoming the darling of the elite. Knowing the king’s lascivious nature, he would never pass up the chance to bed such a rare gem. After all, kings throughout history had had affairs with the wives and daughters of their subordinates. It was practically tradition.
Sadly, all of Sangxi’s schemes died with her, her grand plan snuffed out before it sparked.
“No wonder she almost broke my waist…” Rhodes recalled his earlier battle with Little Red Riding Hood, the terrifying power of her legs.
Even his ex-girlfriend, who had spent ten years training her adductors, wasn’t this extreme. If he had to describe it, well, it felt like her insides could move, like she was trying to suck out his soul. Fortunately, he had been in his werewolf form during the fight. If he’d been an ordinary man, he probably wouldn’t have lasted even three seconds.
No wonder she was able to endure the power of a transformed werewolf during their first encounter. He had assumed it was natural talent, but it turned out her abilities were honed through years of body modification.
“Alchemy is one hell of a craft.”
Muttering under his breath, Rhodes casually offered the journal up. In the next second, a torrent of alchemy knowledge flowed into his mind in the form of divine insight.
Offering knowledge-based items allowed him to absorb the information directly, not just remembering it, but also understanding and internalizing it as if it were his own.
Having already exchanged the old witch, along with this manual, the two rewards merged perfectly. Rhodes felt that his proficiency in potion-making rivaled that of seasoned professionals with over a decade of study.