Chapter 17: The Witch Teacher’s Approval.

Undead Street No. 111, Night Post Office Grocery Store.

White Sugar glanced at the old wall clock. 0:05. Long Night had arrived, and the sky outside the grocery store had turned completely black.

Yet the外出 White Sugar still had not returned.

She refilled the human-skin lantern with lamp oil, lit it, and pulled open the grocery store door. Claire hung the human-skin lantern on the rusty iron hook on the doorframe.

Claire stood outside the door, her gaze piercing through the endless darkness ahead. The end of the street was empty, not a single figure in sight.

“White Sugar… didn’t make it back?” Claire murmured softly.

The witch lady’s face remained expressionless, as if she had long anticipated this outcome and felt no surprise at all.

After all, she was only a human.

Long Night in this world was an absolute taboo for weak creatures like humans.

Without extraordinary means to protect herself, even encountering mindless ghouls would be a life-or-death situation, let alone the irregular terrifying existences that roamed everywhere.

Yet even knowing that White Sugar would definitely encounter danger when going out,

Claire felt no regret whatsoever.

If she only hid passively within the grocery store’s protection to avoid danger, it was no different from being dead. That day would eventually come soon enough.

What she had done was merely accelerate the timeline.

“Better go back to sleep.”

Claire spoke to herself.

If she couldn’t return before Long Night, then after Long Night, the probability of White Sugar surviving and returning to the grocery store was less than one in a thousand.

Waiting any longer seemed meaningless.

“Haa~~”

Claire yawned, a tear forming at the corner of her eye. She turned around, about to return to her room.

Suddenly, something entered the range of her spiritual perception. She froze, even her turning motion becoming extremely stiff.

Looking toward the end of the dark street, her eyes were filled with astonishment.

At the end of the street, a petite girl’s figure suddenly appeared. Her steps were slow and unsteady, her body swaying as she staggered forward.

At first glance, one would worry she might trip over a small pebble on the road the next second.

The straw hat the girl had worn when leaving during White Night was nowhere to be seen. Her arms appeared injured, hanging limply at her sides. She was biting down on something pitch-black in her mouth.

Claire’s blood-red eyes glowed faintly. She saw clearly—it was a revolver.

“She actually came back alive.”

Her tone was clearly calm, yet even Claire herself didn’t notice the corners of her mouth subconsciously lifting.

“Huff… Hoo…”

It hurt. Her whole body felt like it was about to fall apart after being hit by a large truck!

She was covered in wounds. White Sugar staggered forward, breathing heavily.

Even now, recalling everything she had just experienced, White Sugar still didn’t know how she had survived.

It wasn’t a life review, but it did remind her of her childhood experiences back on Earth.

Any child who grew up in the countryside like White Sugar would have had the same experience—rarely making plans to play at a classmate’s village on the weekend, only to be chased by a crazy village dog that bit their pant legs.

After Long Night fell, the ghouls that jumped out on the road were just as crazy.

If not for the potions she brought from White Night and the Demon Hunter Revolver sponsored by Miss Demon Hunter, White Sugar estimated she would have been gnawed until not even bone scraps remained.

She looked up toward the grocery store.

The human-skin lantern representing business hours had already been hung on the iron hook, stingily illuminating only a very small area.

And within the range of that lantern’s light, a figure stood quietly waiting. It was White Sugar’s witch teacher.

The remaining distance was only about a hundred meters, yet it felt extraordinarily long to walk.

The only thing that felt somewhat strange was that the pack of ghouls that usually lingered outside the grocery store at this time had all disappeared, as if fearing something, and were all hiding.

50 meters, 30 meters, 10 meters, 5 meters…

Until the final reachable distance, White Sugar finally stepped into the range illuminated by the lantern. Under the light, Claire clearly saw the girl’s current wretched appearance.

Her clothes had been torn by the ghouls’ sharp claws, with fresh blood continuously seeping from the wounds and soaking the fabric. Her arms, having participated in combat, were covered in scratches and bite marks.

Bacterial toxins had invaded the flesh of her arms, severing sensory nerves. She couldn’t even lift them.

The look in the girl’s eyes seemed like she wanted to say something.

But with the revolver in her mouth, she could only roll her throat, unable to produce any sound.

Seeing this, Claire took the revolver from the girl’s mouth and silently waited. A faint smile finally appeared on the girl’s deathly pale face as she spoke.

“Teacher… I… I’m back.”

The moment the words left her mouth, it was as if she had released the last bit of strength in her body. Her legs went soft, and she collapsed into Claire’s arms.

Everything before her turned black as she completely lost consciousness.

【Congratulations on completing the task ‘Deliver the Letter’.】
【Task Rewards Received: Experience +250, Ghost Coins ×250, Recognition from your teacher the Witch ‘Claire Charlotte’.】

“Who gave you the courage to dirty my clothes? You’re clearly just a mere White Sugar.” The witch lady’s eyes curved, feigning displeasure.

………

Late at night, Night Post Office Grocery Store.

Consciousness gradually awakened. The emptiness before her eyes disappeared as White Sugar slowly opened them. What greeted her was the wooden ceiling of the grocery store.

It was familiar, yet somewhat strange.

White Sugar quickly realized this was not her storage-room-converted bedroom. Her bed wasn’t this soft, nor did it carry the faint pleasant scent she smelled now.

Her windowless room should have carried the musty smell of damp wooden furniture.

“Awake?”

The room door was pushed open. Claire stood at the entrance, holding a large iron pot in her arms as if she had just come from the back kitchen.

The large iron spoon in her hand continuously stirred inside the pot, occasionally adding ingredients that looked like the mucus of some soft-bodied creature. Was she making medicine?

“Teacher…”

“You still have a large amount of ghoul toxin in your body. I’m preparing a special effective medicine.” Claire reminded her. “Since you’re awake, don’t sleep yet. Rest after you take the medicine.”

“But my whole body hurts so much…”

“This is a grocery store, not a clinic. There’s no anesthesia, so endure it.”

For some reason, White Sugar felt that her teacher’s words sounded very familiar, as if she had heard them somewhere before.

White Sugar didn’t ask why she was in her teacher’s room. Thinking about it, it was probably because her original room was too shabby and unsuitable for treating injuries.

“Teacher, can I still be saved?”

After finally returning to the grocery store, White Sugar was still very afraid of dying.

“Uh… hard to say. After all, even the most powerful witch cannot guarantee a 100% success rate in potion-making.”

As she said this, the corners of Claire’s mouth were curved upward.

This made it impossible for White Sugar to tell whether the witch teacher was scaring her or telling her the actual situation.

She hoped it was the former—like a playful girl’s joke. She still didn’t want to die so soon.