What Witch? This Alchemist is Breaking Bad!

As Leon poured his consciousness into it, the beam of light shining out from the shaft truly seemed to separate into a wisp of faintly glowing mist.

Following Leon’s thoughts, it drifted toward the beast cage and gradually gathered into a clump inside.

“Let’s start with something simple.” Leon thought this, and the first thing that came to mind was the most classic Level One monster — the Slime.

In that instant, the Slime’s general physiological structure naturally surfaced in his mind, like a three-dimensional diagram being constructed within his thoughts.

Very quickly, that cluster of magic power turned pale blue.

Over the course of about ten minutes, the magic power gradually manifested a form — a translucent pale-blue sphere, with an egg-sized core floating inside.

After the Slime’s form gradually stabilized, it began to wriggle across the ground.

“It really worked!” Rena’s eyes widened in astonishment.

Leon’s conjecture had been confirmed.

After becoming the Lord of the Labyrinth, he truly possessed the ability to create monsters.

“It worked, but—” Leon frowned slightly as he carefully observed the Slime wriggling inside the cage.

“Why is it so small?”

This Slime was only about the size of a papaya, roughly the same as a newly split Slime.

A mature Slime could grow larger than a watermelon.

Leon tried to control the Slime to crawl out of the beast cage, then had Rena try controlling it as well.

Controlling such a low-level monster posed no difficulty for either of them.

Leon decided to try another creature.

He gathered magic power again and attempted to create another monster he was familiar with — the Head-Hunting Rabbit.

Likewise, its physiological structure surfaced in his mind.

This time, the separated magic power turned into red mist.

After gathering together, it took about fifteen minutes to slowly form the shape of a rabbit.

“This—” Seeing the Head-Hunting Rabbit he had created, Leon frowned again.

The rabbit he had created was clearly a young rabbit that had just been weaned and grown fur, small enough to be easily held in someone’s palm.

“It seems the monsters you create all start at the juvenile stage,” Rena said.

“This is a bit different from what I imagined.” Leon shook his head.

The Drake had produced five fully grown Petrified Lizards in just one or two days, yet when he created a Level One monster, he could only produce a juvenile.

This was quite different from the image he had of creating an army of monsters within the labyrinth.

Was it because his magic power level was insufficient, or was there an inherent difference between a human serving as the Lord of the Labyrinth and a monster serving as one?

Originally, he had worried that the monsters he created might lose control, which was why he had Rena keep the Demonic Wolves on standby nearby.

Yet the monsters he created were all juveniles, posing virtually no threat.

“Let’s try something else.”

Leon drew upon magic power again.

This time, he wanted to attempt creating the Bloodsucking Mosquito Bats that had been discovered in this labyrinth.

However, this time, the physiological structure of the Bloodsucking Mosquito Bat did not appear in his mind.

Although the magic power within the beam of light responded to his command, it merely drifted around where his consciousness focused, showing no intention of condensing.

Leon was surprised by this failure.

The Bloodsucking Mosquito Bat was not a particularly high-level monster, and it was even smaller than the Head-Hunting Rabbit.

The Head-Hunting Rabbit could at least be considered a Level Two monster.

After thinking for a moment, he glanced at the three Demonic Wolves standing by not far away.

Slowly gathering magic power, he prepared to create a Demonic Wolf.

Yet once again, the magic power merely wandered back and forth at that spot, without condensing into a monster.

Leon and Rena looked at each other, both at a loss for a moment, then began to think about the reason.

The Slime and the Head-Hunting Rabbit were monsters they had raised before, while the Demonic Wolves and Bloodsucking Mosquito Bats were monsters of the Arundel Island Labyrinth.

If there was any difference between the two—

“Could it be related to whether you’ve extracted magical essence from them?” Rena suddenly thought of a possibility.

After obtaining the Witch’s power, Leon had once experimented by refining magical essence from the Slimes and Head-Hunting Rabbits they had raised.

But after discovering that the purity of the magical essence he refined was inferior to Rena’s, he had largely stopped trying.

Leon considered it and felt it made some sense.

It seemed that the types of monsters he could create needed to have formed some direct connection with him.

Perhaps this connection had been established during the process of extracting magical essence from them, which was why, when creating Slimes and Head-Hunting Rabbits, their physiological structures had surfaced in his mind.

Verifying it was simple — as long as Leon refined magical essence once from materials of other monsters, then attempted to create them again.

The Bloodsucking Mosquito Bats and Giant Rats they had captured from this labyrinth last time had been slaughtered due to their low breeding value.

Some had been left in the labyrinth to be eaten by the Drake, while the portion taken outside had been processed quickly by Rena to prevent decay.

The magical essence refined from them had only reached around seventy-two percent purity.

As for the Demonic Wolves, they had not slaughtered any yet.

The only ready-made magical essence reagents available here were those extracted from the Drake and the Petrified Lizards.

After some thought, Leon decided to play it safe and try with the Petrified Lizards first.

It would also allow them to test whether the Moilai Altar in this temple was useful.

Leon explained his idea to Rena, and the two quickly arranged the Petrified Lizard magical essence reagent on the altar.

The altar in this temple was enormous, like a plaza.

The runes and magic arrays carved upon it were far more complex, yet at certain key points there were raised platforms inscribed with magic arrays and runes of precisely fitting dimensions, clearly meant for witches to refine magical essence.

They carried the distillation apparatus up, and Leon began refining magical essence.

Very soon, he extracted a test tube of magical essence that shimmered with a gray sheen.

“This altar refines magical essence so quickly,” Rena commented.

Refining magical essence on this altar took only one-third of the time they had needed at the smaller altar.

Whether it was due to differences in craftsmanship or because it was within an active labyrinth, he did not know.

Leon tried further purifying it twice.

The transparency of the magical essence from the second and third refinements did not change noticeably.

It seemed that on this altar, even the additional purification step could be simplified.

Rena compared the reagent’s color, then concluded, “The purity is seventy-five percent.”

“If I can refine it to seventy-five percent, then you should be able to get close to eighty percent,” Leon said.

“That would require testing,” Rena replied.

“These Petrified Lizards haven’t even eaten humans, yet they already yield this level of purity. That proves the claim is true — the higher a monster’s level, the purer the magical essence extracted from it. In that case, we should be able to extract unprecedentedly high-purity magical essence from the Drake,” Leon speculated.

After refining magical essence from the Petrified Lizards, Leon once again attempted to create a monster.

This time, as he drew upon magic power, the physiological structure of the Petrified Lizard successfully appeared in his mind.

The mist of magic power turned gray-blue, then began to condense.

But in the end, the magic power did not take the shape of a lizard.

Instead, it gradually condensed into an oval form, finally becoming a gray-blue egg about the size of a volleyball.

Leon and Rena both stared blankly for a moment.

This was — a Petrified Lizard egg?

“Don’t tell me we have to wait for it to hatch on its own?” Leon gave a wry smile.

“It’s not entirely without advantages. If we raise it from the juvenile stage, the monster should be easier to control,” Rena said.

“Petrified Lizards are venomous and not easy to raise. If we’re going to raise a Level Three monster, Demonic Wolves would be more suitable,” Leon said after thinking it over.

After creating this Level Three monster, Leon felt obvious fatigue.

Although creating monsters utilized the labyrinth’s magic power, guiding that magic power still required him to circulate his own magic to trigger resonance.

He could not create monsters without limit.

Moreover, the monsters he created were all in the juvenile stage or still in the incubation phase.

They would need to be raised to maturity before they had practical value.

Viewed this way, his ability to create monsters as the Lord of the Labyrinth was actually rather limited.

If there were already existing monster species, allowing them to reproduce on their own might even be more efficient.

The advantage of this ability lay in creating monsters they did not currently possess — especially those that were individually highly valuable.

For example, that Drake.

If he refined magical essence from the Drake and could create an Drake egg, and the hatched Drake would obey his command, then this labyrinth would effectively gain another powerful guardian!

However, this could only remain speculation for now.

Creating an Drake undoubtedly carried risks and could only be attempted under sufficient safeguards.

Whether his magic power level could even accomplish it was unknown.

At the very least, in his current state today, he could not continue.

“Let’s stop the experiment here for now,” Leon said, turning his gaze toward the indentation on the wall at the deepest part of the labyrinth. Next, let’s see what’s inside that secret chamber.”

“There really is a room behind there?” Rena carefully examined it alongside Leon but still could not discern anything unusual.

“Since it’s been confirmed that I am the Lord of the Labyrinth, then the secret chamber most likely exists.” Leon approached the indentation and began feeling around, preparing to find the mechanism to open it.

However, the moment he touched the indentation, a rumbling sound of mechanisms activating suddenly echoed from the wall.

Then a hidden door in the wall opened automatically, revealing a narrow passage before him.

“It opened?” Rena said, dumbfounded.

“Why did it open on its own?” Leon was equally astonished.

He felt that he had not even touched any mechanism — he had merely touched the wall.

Was it because he possessed the Witch’s blessing? Or because he was the Lord of the Labyrinth?

He concentrated his mind to probe the pitch-black room at the other end of the passage.

He still could not sense what was inside, only the thick flow of magic power circulating within.

But regardless, if the room inside had been prepared for the Lord of the Labyrinth or for the Witch serving as the Earth Mother Goddess’s priestess, then the likelihood of danger was greatly reduced.

“Leon, there’s writing here.” Rena suddenly pointed near the entrance of the passage.

There was a line of characters on the wall that Leon did not recognize, somewhat similar to the runes on the Moilai Altar.

“The secret chamber inside is called the Chamber of Ritual.”

“You can read that script?” Leon was somewhat surprised.

“It’s an ancient script used by followers of Moilai. My grandmother taught me some of it,” Rena said.

“With a hidden room like this, perhaps there’s something valuable inside.” Leon said this, though he had not fully let down his guard.

“Let the Demonic Wolves go in first to scout the way.”