Chapter 1 A huge silver moon hangs in the sky…
A huge silver moon hung high in the sky, illuminating the boundless forest below.
The night brings tranquility and peace, making it the best time of day to rest.
However, hurried footsteps came from the depths of the forest. A woman wearing a cloak, her face filled with panic, stepped over the low bushes and hopped across the winding river on the pebbles in the stream, muttering repeatedly, "Oh no, oh no, we're going to miss the blooming season of the night-blooming flowers."
A crow flew beside the woman, chasing after her and scolding her, "Idiot Mela, Silas warned you a long time ago not to sleep in."
"But Mela not only slept in late, but also thought Silas was being noisy when he kindly reminded her to get up, so she cast a sleeping spell on him!"
So it wasn't until the silver moon reached its highest point in the sky that Silas and its master were suddenly awakened from their dreams.
At this time, the luminous flower has already passed its short flowering period and is about to wither.
The cloaked woman, Mela, was too busy to bicker with her pet raven. Seeing that the silver moon was about to fall, she stumbled and tripped over a stone hidden in the grass.
As a result of the movement, the black hood slipped down, and a head of fiery red curly hair cascaded out like a waterfall. The color was so intense that it resembled a blazing fire, igniting the silver moonlight cast from the sky and serving as an embellishment around her.
She looked like a fairy who had stepped out of an oil painting; her beauty was indescribable.
However, the next second, Mela grabbed Silas, who was circling around her, and quickly cast a spell to enlarge him. She then hurriedly climbed onto the back of the mountain-sized bird and commanded, "Fly fast! Maybe we can still make it in time!"
Well, to fulfill his master's wish, Silas had no choice but to flap his wings quickly, darting across the vast forest like an arrow and casting a huge black shadow.
With Silas's help, Mela stumbled and rushed to the flowerbed, picking a luminous flower that hadn't completely withered.
The small flowers, emitting a faint blue glow, crowded together and covered the basket that Mela was carrying on her forearm, meaning that their trip tonight had not been in vain.
"Thank you, Silas." Mela hugged Silas's wings, burying her face in the warm feathers and letting out a comfortable sigh.
“Mera, I think I just saw someone enter the forest,” Silas said.
"Did you see who it was?" Mela asked in surprise. "It's strange. Ever since the rumors spread that an evil witch and man-eating beasts lived here, I haven't seen a single human dare to step into the Dark Forest for five whole years."
Mela was right, so when Silas caught a glimpse of several small black dots moving on the ground from the air, his first thought was that he was seeing things.
When it looked closer, it realized that several men were chasing a child.
Moreover, "I saw that the men were carrying weapons. If they caught up with him, the child would probably be doomed."
“Mera, should we go save that child?” Silas asked.
Mela nodded without hesitation. "Go and see. If the child survives before we get there, it means he's not meant to die."
*
"Boss, should we keep chasing? That dark shadow that just flew by must be a giant, man-eating beast raised by the witch." A man looked at the team leader with a pale face. When the huge dark shadow covered the sky, they were all so frightened that their legs went weak and they almost sat down on the ground.
The man he called "boss" had a grim face as he scanned the fearful expressions on the faces of the others, and finally decided, "Forget it, let's not chase after them. Prince Lex will never survive being swallowed by a giant beast."
Upon hearing this, the others felt as if they had been granted a pardon and quickly retreated from the dark forest, which looked particularly eerie and terrifying at night.
The prince Lex the man mentioned was panting heavily, dragging his tired and heavy body as he desperately ran forward, using all his strength to shake off the pursuers behind him.
"Huffing and puffing."
Lex couldn't run anymore.
This body had not eaten anything for two whole days, and had also been hit by an arrow during the previous escape, with sticky blood covering most of its shoulder.
Lex has been able to hold on until now only because the constant pain from his wounds reminds him that he cannot stop, or those people will definitely catch up and kill him.
No, he must not die. He must live to return and avenge the Knight Commander, so that the agonizing cries of his enemies will echo throughout the entire capital.
Lex gritted his teeth, a trickle of blood spilling from his lips, barely managing to muster a bit of strength, but the next second he uncontrollably fell forward.
Lex tripped hard on a stone hidden in the grass and fell straight to the ground.
Damn it, he had to get up quickly. Lex struggled to his feet, completely unaware that the footsteps of the pursuers behind him had stopped.
However, no matter how much Lex struggled, his body was already at its limit. He couldn't muster any strength at all, and even his eyelids drooped.
Drowsiness washed over him like a tide, engulfing Lex's already faltering mind and threatening to drag him into the abyss.
No! Lex screamed inwardly, he didn't want to fall asleep!
In this critical moment, Lex remembered the guardian deity worshipped by the royal family for generations. If there really is a god in the world, could he reach out and save him at this moment?
He swore by the name of Nurenger that if he survived, he would become the new king and exact his revenge, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and make all those who coveted his throne pay the price.
In return, he would offer everything he owned to the gods, whether it was the wealth of the entire kingdom, supreme power, or anything else, he would gladly give it all up, as long as the gods wished.
In a daze, Lex felt as if a pair of hands were really embracing him; they were slender, soft, and carried a feminine fragrance.
Was the legendary valiant guardian deity actually a noble goddess?
This was Lex's only thought before he fell into a complete coma.
*
"He actually survived!" Silas, now the size of a normal crow, jumped onto the armrest of the rocking chair and tilted his head to examine the disheveled Lex.
After Mela found that Lex was still breathing, she took him back to the cabin deep in the forest.
The house was a mess, with hardly any room to even step.
No, there's another place that wasn't used to pile up all sorts of clutter: Mela's beloved rocking chair, which she uses to rest every day.
Well, since the rescue was already done, Mela generously gave up the rocking chair and placed Lex on it.
In addition, Mela also pulled the arrow out of Lex's back.
After examining it, she found that the arrowhead was not poisoned and that all she needed to do was apply a layer of hemostatic powder.
As a witch who lived alone in the Dark Forest and was infamous for her fearsome reputation, Mela's potion-making skills were beyond question, and the effects were immediate. After applying the hemostatic powder, the bleeding from Lex's wounds quickly stopped.
The bleeding stopped, and although Lex's face was still pale, it didn't get any worse.
"That should be fine, right?" Mela wondered uncertainly.
Just to be on the safe side, she checked Lex inside and out several more times, but couldn't find any other wounds.
So if Lex doesn't wake up later, it definitely can't be Mela's problem.
“Mera, his hair is blonde, he’s from the Nurenger royal family,” Silas suddenly shouted.
“Who in the kingdom doesn’t know that blond hair is the symbol of the Nurenger royal family?” Mela calmly retorted.
Even infants lying in their cradles, too young to know anything, can learn from their parents that only noble royalty can have hair as black as gold.
It's only now that Silas has been living in seclusion in the Dark Forest with Mela for so long that he's only just realized what's happening.
"What if he wakes up and calls the kingdom's army to arrest us? Mela, have you forgotten why we moved to the forest?" Silas shook his wing, his two beady eyes squinting together as he drifted into thought.
When Silas was just a fledgling that had accidentally fallen from its nest, Mela took it in and kept it as a pet.
Thank goodness, Silas only broke a few bones after falling from his nest in the tree, a minor injury that Mela could easily heal with a healing potion.
After recovering from his injuries, out of gratitude, Silas stayed on as Mela's pet.
At that time, they lived in a small, relatively unknown town, and Mela was the most beautiful girl in town. Suitors often came to her doorstep, trying to get her attention.
Some of them took a different approach, showering Silas with compliments, saying that the raven Mela kept could occasionally speak human language, making it an exceptionally intelligent bird, and that only Mela was worthy of keeping such a pet.
Silas often took great pride in this.
Unexpectedly, after Mela revealed her identity as a witch, her suitors changed their attitude and called her "the witch's magical pet." Her ability to speak human language also became a symbol of her past as a cannibal—crows are known to eat corpses.
"Nonsense!" Silas wanted to defend itself, saying that it was only after drinking the potion concocted by Mela that it gained the ability to speak.
To conceal his extraordinary abilities, Silas disguised himself as an ordinary crow, at most appearing a little smarter than a regular bird.
But people didn't believe in the witch, and they didn't believe in her pet either.
In church propaganda, witches are synonymous with treachery, wickedness, and hypocrisy. They are capricious and may be laughing with you one second and cursing you to a miserable death the next.
They are evil characters with whom peaceful coexistence is absolutely impossible.
Upon hearing that a witch had appeared in his fiefdom, the local lord hastily dispatched a group of men to bind her and send her to the gallows.
In the end, Mela had no choice but to leave the town and hide with Silas deep in the dark forest, where they built this cabin.
Now that she has rescued the royal family, what's the difference between that and walking into a trap?
Every king of the empire was crowned with the approval of the church! In other words, royalty and witches are irreconcilable enemies!
"Perhaps after the king's army captures us, they'll set up a fire, burn me to death, and then turn you into roasted crows." Seeing Silas's fear, Mela couldn't help but threaten him.
"Then let's throw him out quickly! Throw him far away!" Silas was so frightened that he almost fell off the handrail.
This drew a sneer from Mela, "Don't worry, if he could really summon the army, why wouldn't he let the army protect him?"
They even ended up in a miserable situation where they were being hunted down.
“Besides, the king’s army can’t catch us.” Mela grabbed Silas and stroked its ruffled feathers soothingly. “With you here, we can fly away anytime.”
Yes, Silas is quite confident in himself.
As long as Mela casts the spell to make it grow bigger, it can carry Mela out of the forest, over mountains, across oceans, and into a secret realm where no one can find it.
Thinking about it this way, what's so scary about the king's army?
Regardless, "Mera is the kindest, most helpful, and most considerate witch I've ever met!" Silas began his daily routine of flattery—no, heartfelt praise of his master.
It always believed that its ability to win Mela's exclusive favor was inseparable from its boastful nature.
“Okay, I know, there’s no need to brag about this kind of fact.” Mela was clearly buying into Silas’s act.
But soon, Mela remembered the basket of luminous flowers she had brought back.
One characteristic of the luminous flower is that its potion-making effect decreases significantly every hour after it is picked.
She had painstakingly picked so many night-blooming flowers at the perfect time to ensure the best medicinal effect, and she couldn't let them go to waste.
"Alright, keep an eye on him. If he wakes up, just call out to him." Mela let go of Silas's hand and went about her own business.
First, the luminous flowers need to be classified according to their color intensity. Then, based on the size of their petals, they can be further divided into several groups.
Don't underestimate this step. The making of potions cannot be taken lightly; even an extra 0.01 grams can lead to failure.
Of course, even if the refining process is successful by chance, the results may be quite different.
For example, it's quite possible to turn Silas from a crow into a frog.
Yes, glow-in-the-dark flowers are an important ingredient in the transformation potion. That's why Mela values them so much.
She had recently made an agreement with a customer to hand over ten bottles of transformation potion in three days.
"Don't worry about him, I'll definitely keep an eye on him," Silas assured, puffing out his chest.
Then it landed back on the armrest of the rocking chair, staring intently at Lex's peaceful sleeping face with its two round, black bean-like eyes.
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