Darcy, who was competing in a bubble-blowing contest at the tavern, received a phone call. He drank down the fizzing liquor while answering.
"Hello? Fury?" The smile on Darcy's face froze as he hurriedly ran into the tavern restroom and locked the door.
"Sorry, this is the only way I could think of. The Snake Lady isn't someone just anyone can meet."
"Don't worry, they won't beat you to death. Johnson is the person closest to the Snake Lady. You can meet her through him."
From the other end of the phone came a faint curse involving family greetings. Darcy guiltily hung up.
Someone knocked on the restroom door, and a drunken, slurred voice came through.
"Did you fall into the toilet? Come out and let's go another three hundred rounds!"
Darcy pressed the flush button and opened the door. Feeling guilty inside, he could only silently pray: "May the Wizard King protect him, I hope Fury is okay."
Then he rushed out to continue the drinking contest. The werewolf wizard, possibly due to having a longer snout, could blow bubbles higher. A crowd of wizards accused him of cheating.
Martha felt a shake, and when she woke up, the growling of her stomach had become like a dragon's roar. She groggily got up, rubbing her eyes. The harsh sunlight made her very uncomfortable.
"Pull the curtains," she mumbled.
She was about to fall back asleep. But as she lay there, she suddenly opened her eyes wide and let out a sharp scream. She tried to find something to shield herself from the sunlight. In her panic, she fell off the bed.
With sunlight shining on her face, she had already despairingly thought of her last words. But after a while, she suddenly realized something was wrong.
Tentatively moving her palm away from her face, the sunlight shone on her face, making her eyelids glow red underneath. Slowly opening her eyelids, she was stunned in place.
During the time she was a vampire, she had tried touching sunlight. The result was nearly being burned like roasted pork. Since then, she had been extremely careful, even keeping the curtains in her home tightly drawn.
If she hadn't been unbearably hungry, she wouldn't have gone out during the day to hunt for prey. But now, she felt the sunlight that she had once taken for granted, then later avoided at all costs.
The warmth touched her body, giving temperature to her cold fingers. She was overjoyed, incredulously touching various parts of her body with her fingers.
After confirming she wouldn't be ignited by the sun, Martha happily jumped up on the spot. Her first instinct was to share her joy with someone.
After looking around, she ran to one side, then hurriedly ran back. Because that side had dragon statues, and the eerie wailing sounds scared her into rolling and crawling away.
Finally, she found the door and walked out. Those unfriendly plants seemed to know she had turned back into a human. The trumpet flowers sang songs and parted to either side, creating a path.
Martha didn't notice that her heavy, black-framed glasses, which usually sat on her nose, had fallen off when she first tumbled out of bed. The clear path before her eyes no longer had the blur of severe myopia.
The morning carried a moist fragrance as she ran and ran, her clothes getting wet from brushing against the dew. She finally saw the person she could share her joy with.
She ran over with delight on her face, getting closer and closer. Her lips parted slightly, about to call out those words.
"Jo..."
The sound stopped abruptly. Her running speed gradually slowed. Martha looked ahead.
There were two corpses. She could confirm it. A middle-aged man and a well-maintained woman. Their eyes were wide open, pupils dilated, already dead.
The joy that had been on the tip of her tongue disappeared, replaced by panic. Martha looked at John and saw that youthful face was gloomy, staring motionlessly at the corpses.
His eyes carried a soul-stirring blackness. Martha remembered those eyes were beautiful, reddish-brown. But now, the eyes had turned black, pupils condensed into slits. Those were dragon's eyes.
Under his gaze, the corpses gradually began to change. The original two people transformed into two green-skinned creatures with pointed ears. No, that wasn't accurate. They were aliens. A type of alien with shapeshifting abilities.
Martha hesitated for a long time between leaving and approaching, finally carefully coming over.
"Are you... are you okay?" she asked quietly.
John turned his head and glanced at her sideways. "I thought you would leave this place. After seeing so many strange things during this time, you should have been quite frightened."
"You helped me turn back into a normal person," Martha's voice gradually became smaller. "I don't think you're a bad person."
"Whether I'm bad or good, I've never cared," John laughed dryly.
Martha pursed her lips. She actually wanted to say she didn't think he was a good person either. But she still didn't have the courage.
"What is this?" Martha, as a medical student, had seen many cadavers, but this was her first time seeing aliens.
"Probably aliens," John no longer had the gloominess from before, saying flatly. "They transformed into my parents' appearance and came to call me son."
"How did you tell they weren't your parents?" Martha regretted asking as soon as the words left her mouth. After all, they had only known each other for one day.
But John didn't hide it from her, saying calmly, "Because I can use Legilimency, which you can understand as mind reading."
He extended his right hand, and under the corpse, a mass of restless, boiling hot energy was trapped in an ice block, unable to escape. This small mass was enough to cover fifty meters around them. They had transformed into his family members to carry out a suicide bombing against him.
Although John no longer had his previous gloominess, his eyes remained in their vertical pupil state. Black energy churned within them, and scales that flashed across his face had gained an additional layer of black.
He walked in another direction, and Martha hurriedly followed. She didn't dare think randomly anymore, having heard that John could read minds.
Walking past walls wrapped in layers of vegetation. In the center of the garden, with surrounding plants turned to charcoal, a fifty-meter diameter crater told of something terrible.
There hadn't been two visitors, but three. Vines had grabbed the alien that had transformed into Ariana and flung it away. John had frozen the other two with the Casket of Ancient Winters.
The tremor from the explosion was what Martha had felt as shaking earlier. Under this explosion, no bodies remained.
John glanced around and lightly waved his wand. The crater began to be covered with vegetation.
On the two aliens' bodies were communicators. John said to MOSS, "Check the communicator signal."
"Sir, the signal originates from Washington."
"Washington?" John narrowed his eyes. "What a familiar place indeed."
He waved his hand, and the two corpses flew into the crater. At the bottom of the crater, root systems extended and took root in the corpses. Soon, the bodies were covered with plants.
Martha felt a chill watching this. John said, "You can leave now."
He turned and walked toward the manor. Martha stood there stunned, not expecting to receive only this one sentence. She felt like a complimentary receipt, worthless and casually discarded. She felt hurt inside, despite only one day of acquaintance.
Why?
John didn't like people taking advantage of his trust, and he especially didn't like people using his family. Coincidentally, both of these dislikes had been exploited this time.
John's phone lit up, the camera flashing red as it said, "Sir, the location has been found."
"Within fifty kilometers of your family, scanning is complete. No high-energy reactions detected."
"Thank you, MOSS."
Getting this answer, John's tense heart relaxed. He opened his phone, looking at the coordinates provided, his eyes carrying a dangerous glint.
"Someone wants to play games with us."
Games with the Wizard King were far more dangerous than imagined.