The Daughter of Bloat was stunned at first. Then she caught on and couldn't help laughing.

"What an interesting little thing. What, are you saying that if I offer you enough benefits, you'd betray that woman and become my dependent?"

"Why not?" Jiang Jiu replied with a smile. "As long as you pay enough."

She could've righteously snapped back with, You're trying to buy me with money? That's an insult.

But that only worked if the Daughter of Bloat wasn't offering enough.

If the offer was good enough, Jiang Jiu would declare on the spot that from this day on, the two of them were sisters of the heart, closer than blood... until someone else offered more.

There were no eternal sisters. Only eternal benefits.

And right now, she wasn't afraid of what the Daughter of Bloat might do to her.

To humans, an ant and a cricket weren't really that different. At most, the latter sounded nicer when it chirped. By the same logic, to the Daughter of Bloat before her, likely an avatar of an Outer God, Jiang Jiu, an Apprentice Witch, probably wasn't much different from an ordinary human either...

Of course, if she screamed, she'd probably sound better than an ordinary human too.

Still, the Daughter of Bloat was presumably an Outer God with a capital O, one who had transcended such low tastes. So for now, she had no interest in making Jiang Jiu cry out a few times for her amusement.

Her smile only grew brighter, more unrestrained.

"Interesting! You humans really are interesting... no, even among all the humans I've seen, you're a particularly amusing specimen."

"You're too kind."

"Too kind? No, I'm not exaggerating."

The Daughter of Bloat vanished from Jiang Jiu's side and reappeared in front of her.

She still covered her face with a black fan in one hand. With the other, she gently lifted the maid's chin, her thumb brushing Jiang Jiu's lips in an intimate stroke.

"I've seen heroes with unshakable conviction, and I've seen weak, despicable trash. But none of them were as interesting as you. They're either peddlers of morality or hypocrites inside and out."

"You're probably the latter, though not entirely. Of course, I don't care about the little schemes of your kind. But after seeing too many of them, even I get bored."

The more she spoke, the more delighted she sounded.

"But you're different. You're not a hypocrite. You're a true scoundrel. How can you be this honestly..."

At that point, the Daughter of Bloat actually couldn't find the right word.

But Jiang Jiu could. So she smiled sweetly and supplied it for her.

"I don't even know how to describe it... how is she... this trashy? I'm literally crying—right?"

The Daughter of Bloat didn't answer whether she was right.

She froze for a moment, then burst out laughing again.

"Interesting. Little thing, you really are interesting. To think you dare joke with me like this."

Then she withdrew her hand. Her figure flickered, and she appeared in midair once more.

Her sleeves fluttered. Her black hair fell loose.

The lovely young girl in yellow-black silk, face hidden behind a fan, asked with keen interest,

"Then let's get back to the point. Interesting little thing, are you interested in becoming the dependent of me, Naia, the Chaos Witch?"

The maid elegantly lifted her skirt and bowed to her. Then she said softly,

"My name is Jiang Jiu. Of course I'm interested, but... what are the benefits?"

It was like job hunting. You went to an interview, tried to discuss salary, and the boss started talking to you about dreams instead, painting a glorious future.

Stuff like, "All my employees are my brothers," or "The company is still in its early stage, but once we make it big, we definitely won't mistreat you," or "Don't talk about money, it's vulgar and hurts feelings. Do we work hard just for money?"

Jiang Jiu had heard plenty of that before. She'd built up resistance.

She didn't want to hear this Chaos Witch talk to her about life and ideals too. What nonsense. If you weren't working for money, then what, to help add bricks to the boss's villa?

What a damn leek spirit.

So the maid tilted her head up and asked in a crisp, serious tone,

"Then if I work for you, what exactly can you give me in return?"

"A great many things," Naia said with a light laugh. "Wealth, power, beauties. I can even make you a hero praised by the world... I can fulfill all your wishes."

"All of them?"

"All of them."

The Chaos Witch answered with calm ease, as if she wasn't just an Archwitch, but also moonlighting as God.

But... there wasn't really a witch who thought she was an omniscient, omnipotent god, right?

No way. No way, right?

Jiang Jiu smiled, pretended to think for a moment, then seriously raised her head to look up at Naia.

"Love."

"Hm?"

"I want love. Didn't you say you could fulfill all my wishes? Then my wish is to receive love."

"..."

A very subtle expression appeared on the Chaos Witch's face.

Like a butcher getting toyed with and still having to force a smile. Like a fruit stall owner being pressed to the edge.

Jiang Jiu was only one line away from asking, So, is your melon guaranteed ripe?

And of course, Naia wasn't about to sell her any unripe melon either.

She had finally realized that the maid before her had come here looking for trouble from the start.

Because witches were destined never to obtain love.

Not everyone had the potential to become a witch. Quite the opposite. In this vast world of billions, fewer than one in a million even had a chance.

Lilith had told Jiang Jiu that witches were all lunatics.

Pride, wrath, greed...

All of a witch's power came from her personality traits, or rather, her emotions. And emotions could be controlled, tempered, soothed—love, for example.

Love could suppress a witch's defining traits and weaken her emotions, causing her power to plummet. In more extreme cases, it could make her willingly give up being a witch for the one she loved and become mortal again.

To a witch, love could be deadly poison. Or a cure.

A witch driven mad by love could indeed amplify her traits and gain greater power. But that same power would possess her, drive her out of control, and turn her into a mindless mad witch.

A witch immersed in love, on the other hand, would gradually lose her traits and fade into the crowd. In the end, she'd lose all her power and become an ordinary human again.

Witches were creatures of emotion. Even the Chaos Witch had no reason to give herself a dependent who might lose control at any moment, or simply become mortal.

Without love, she couldn't obtain Jiang Jiu.

If she gave love, she might lose Jiang Jiu at any time.

That was an open scheme, plain and proper.

The Chaos Witch's expression darkened.

Like a butcher being mocked again and again, she clenched the black fan in her hand and asked coldly,

"If you don't wish to become my dependent, so be it. But now you dare toy with me like this... Have you never witnessed the wrath of an Archwitch?"

But Jiang Jiu only gave her a faint smile.

"Mad?"

"You..."

"Triggered?"

"How dare you..."

"That's all you've got?"

"..."

The Chaos Witch seemed to finally wise up and shut her mouth.

But she moved the black fan aside and revealed her true face.

In the Cthulhu Mythos, there was an Outer God named Nyarlathotep, one of the Three Pillars. It delighted in deceiving and tempting humans, and found supreme joy in plunging them into terror and despair.

It had several avatars in the mortal world—the Haunter of the Dark, the Black Pharaoh, the Faceless God...

And one of them was the figure now floating before Jiang Jiu: the Daughter of Bloat.

Legend said the Daughter of Bloat wore yellow-black silk and hid her face behind a black fan, appearing as a young and beautiful girl.

But that was only a disguise, like the glowing lure an anglerfish used to trap small prey. Her true form was a fat woman with tentacles who fed on human brains.

And the fan she used to cover her face was the seal that hid that true form.

But now, the seal was undone.

In her fury, the shapely outline of the girl swelled explosively. Soft, greasy, pale flesh ballooned outward like cola erupting after Mentos, tangled with tentacles from who knew where. They shrieked and writhed in madness. The Chaos Witch's once delicate, lovely face was stuffed full of fat, her features crowded together so grotesquely that anyone who saw it would want to vomit up everything they'd just eaten.

A faint, thin flute note sounded in the distance, like the murmur of a girl drifting into dreams.

The world twisted. All light was swallowed by the Daughter of Bloat, leaving only an abyss glittering with motes of many-colored starlight.

The maid stood within that abyss, looked up, and calmly faced the Outer God.

"So in the end, you're just a banana."

She could even still force her mouth open to sneer,

"You put on a Chinese skin and think that makes you one of us? You're still just a disgusting mutt... Do you know what respect for the dead means? It was already hard enough for him while he was alive, and you're still using him after his death. Even someone as trashy as me wouldn't do that..."

As she spoke, the girl suddenly couldn't help laughing. Then, with difficulty, she raised a hand and gave the furious Outer God an internationally recognized gesture of friendliness and courtesy.

She flipped her off.

As if even while facing an Outer God, even while crushed by the pressure of an Archwitch until she couldn't move, Jiang Jiu was still invincible in this world.

So the enraged Daughter of Bloat lashed her tentacles and charged at her in a frenzy.

She was going to eat her brain and turn her into her eternal puppet.

But at that moment, Jiang Jiu broke into a radiant smile and hooked a finger under the collar around her neck.

"Lilith, save me."

She murmured softly.

Then, a faint light flashed.

All at once, hazy mist spread through the air. The starlit abyss was shrouded in cloud and fog, gradually dimming, even being swallowed, assimilated into the mist itself.

The Daughter of Bloat, her tentacles still thrashing wildly, froze in place. She became a silent statue right before Jiang Jiu's eyes.

Then Jiang Jiu heard familiar footsteps.

A witch in black hair and a black dress slowly emerged from the mist. She didn't spare Jiang Jiu a glance. Instead, she walked to the silent Daughter of Bloat, raised a hand, and lightly tapped a fingertip against the tentacle reaching toward Jiang Jiu.

Crack...

A dense chorus of breaking sounds rang out. The silent statue shattered into chunks of varying sizes as they hit the ground. On the broken surfaces, the textures of flesh and organs were still visible.

Only then did the witch finally turn her head. Her cold gaze swept over Jiang Jiu. Her cherry lips parted, as if she were about to say something.

But after facing the Outer God for so long, Jiang Jiu suddenly smiled at her. Then she closed her eyes in exhaustion and collapsed.

She fell against the witch, burying her face in the hollow of her neck, her ink-black hair spilling over her shoulder.

"Thanks."

She whispered softly to the witch, and then she fainted.

So trusting. So completely unguarded.

As if she trusted the witch entirely, as if the witch could do anything she wanted to her.

The witch was silent for a long time, as though considering whether to leave her here in this underground world and walk away.

But in the end, she still couldn't help sighing.

She held her.

She decided that once they got home and Jiang Jiu woke up...

then she'd teach her a lesson.