Chapter 24: Ghost Maid

Chapter 24: Ghost Maid

“Is this… your home?” He stared in surprise at the small castle that appeared in the forest. Though it bore many marks of time’s passage… so the little loli beside him was actually a rich lady at heart?

“A place I lived in before. It should still be usable.” She glanced at the small castle hidden in the forest, and after confirming there were no signs of anyone’s presence, she spoke up.

“How long has it been since you last came back?”

“I forgot.” Loris said as she opened the castle’s door. The massive amount of dust that Zheng Yichen had imagined did not appear. Inside was unusually clean and tidy, as if someone cleaned it regularly.

Huh!? What was that!?

Watching the two semi-transparent figures emerge from the ground, Zheng Yichen, who had just managed to squeeze his body through to get inside the castle, twitched his mouth. They looked like ghosts, didn’t they?

The two semi-transparent figures appeared, gave a slight bow to Loris, and then faded away again.

“What was that?”

“Ghost Maids. You will sleep in the hall. There are no suitable bedrooms for you here.”

“Hmm.” Fine, he nodded. The hall was nothing much, but at least it was better than sleeping outdoors. However, that night Zheng Yichen slept a bit uneasily. Every time he just closed his eyes, he could feel a strange sense of being watched.

When he opened his eyes, the feeling of being watched immediately disappeared again. Irritated, he scratched his nose, looked left and right, then quietly opened the castle door and ran outside.

He didn’t notice that after he left, a white shadow followed him out of the castle.

When he came here during the day, he hadn’t felt anything. The atmosphere was just a bit eerie. But after night fell, the originally ordinary-looking Forest of Illusions revealed its unusual characteristics.

The trees around seemed to have transformed into those with ferocious faces from scary fairy tales, and it felt as if countless malicious gazes were watching him from all sides…

Snap!

He raised his claw and broke off a branch. Squinting his eyes, Zheng Yichen examined the branch. Its brown color had actually turned black at night, and it emitted a faint, peculiar fluctuation.

He had thought the power that induced hallucinations in this forest was something like forest miasma. A small flame ignited on his nail, quickly swelling to the size of a basin. Instead of throwing the fireball, he lightly tossed it up and caught it in his claw.

With his effort, the basin-sized fireball was forcibly compressed to the size of a basketball. This method was something Zheng Yichen had thought of back when dealing with that mage.

A compressed fireball like this had stronger power, similar to the boost from empowered spellcasting. Without this method, the earlier fireball was the limit of what he could do. It wasn’t that the size couldn’t increase further.

Rather, he couldn’t compress the fireball’s power any more. A released magic’s size wasn’t necessarily better if bigger. Making it bigger was simple—just continuously inject mana into the rune patterns. But such magic could only be used to bully the weak.

Was there any difference between a palm-sized cotton ball hitting someone and a car-sized cotton ball hitting someone? The difference lay only in weight. The lethality remained basically unchanged.

Without sufficient control over magic, there would be no accumulation leading to a qualitative change. Doing so was most likely to lead to loss of control. Moreover, maintaining such magic consumed a lot of mana. As long as the magic wasn’t released, one had to continuously expend their own mana to sustain it.

Even if the subsequent mana consumption was small, it was still consumption.

With Zheng Yichen’s current method of directly holding it with his hand, he could not only enhance the released magic’s power afterward but also avoid the subsequent mana consumption.

He clenched his claw. The claw could still tighten a bit more, but it required more strength. Since this was just an experiment, there was no need to go overboard. He threw the fireball in his hand at the tree whose branch he had just broken.

The power-compressed fireball, upon touching the tree, instantly exploded, completely engulfing it in flames. The smell of burning wood immediately spread. Zheng Yichen took one sniff and quickly retreated a distance.

Just one whiff made him feel the surroundings become even more terrifying. This scent definitely had a hallucinogenic effect! Moreover, the flames igniting the tree didn’t last long, quickly dissipating into nothing.

Apart from its leaves being burned off and its color turning a bit darker, the tree was mostly unharmed!

How bizarre. He crushed the branch in his hand into powder. Even though its hardness was similar to a normal branch, its resistance to magic was so high. As Zheng Yichen lifted his foot to leave, he caught a glimpse of a white shadow out of the corner of his eye. Looking closely, wasn’t that the Ghost Maid he had seen during the day?

Her form at night was more solid. Calling her a maid… Zheng Yichen felt her attire was quite inadequate… He would discuss with Loris another day about getting a proper maid uniform.

“Something wrong?” Seeing her approach him, Zheng Yichen asked tentatively.

“……” The Ghost Maid pointed at the tree that still emitted black smoke, then pointed at Zheng Yichen, signaling him to quickly move away from there.

“Hmm? Doesn’t seem like anything’s wrong.” Zheng Yichen glanced at the tree. Apart from the initial puff of smoke making the surroundings seem more terrifying, there were no other effects. By now, he had also adapted to the environment here.

As for fear, there was none. Just like before meeting Loris, when he tried flying, he accidentally glided too far once and directly dived off a highland. He was scared to death at the time, but after falling and finding it wasn’t that painful, his fear of heights plummeted…

A person standing on a half-meter platform feels no pressure, daring to run and jump. But try a thirty-meter high platform! The fear of heights mainly exists because one knows falling from a high place can be fatal. If one knew that falling from three hundred meters felt about the same as falling off a small stool, would they still fear ordinary heights?

That was how Zheng Yichen felt now. Before his transmigration, a firearm pointed at him would make his legs weak. Now, his body could completely ignore attacks from ordinary firearms. Even if aimed at him, he could maintain a nonchalant attitude—after all, it couldn’t hurt him!

The Ghost Maid shook her head, gesturing with her hands. Zheng Yichen watched for a long time before somewhat understanding her meaning.

“Huh, you’re saying my actions have affected… someone?”

The Ghost Maid, with an expression that finally made sense, quickly nodded. She pointed in a direction, signaling Zheng Yichen to go check it out quickly.

“…Who would come to a place like this at night to court death?”