The Speedrun Manual of Miss Witch-Chapter 126 - Irreversible Mental Damage (2/2)

At this moment, Ciel had already walked into the house and locked the wooden door behind her.

The woman she encountered just now didn’t feel like misfortune to Ciel... rather like the good luck her simulated self mentioned after following daily life.

Otherwise, how could a pillow appear just when feeling sleepy? Just as she had a new stitching plan, good material arrived at her doorstep.

Unfortunately, not a corpse.

Directly killing an ordinary person for stitching still posed a certain psychological burden for Ciel—some, but not much.

After all, the other party committed wrongdoing first. It could only be said this was the other party’s karma.

Ciel walked back to her room, lay on the bed, closed her eyes to rest her mind, while reviewing her simulations from beginning to end, checking for any omissions.

Just lying there thinking, gradually, Ciel fell asleep.

But after sleeping for less than twenty minutes, Ciel woke up abruptly from the dream.

Almost the moment she woke up, Ciel had already forgotten what the dream was about, only vaguely remembering hazy purple mist floating in the dream.

The mental impact from the last 【Spiritual Summoning】 hadn’t fully recovered for Ciel.

Gently rubbing her temples, which still felt a dull ache, Ciel got up, walked to the desk, and began silently reciting the Old Ansu dictionary.

Entering that state of high-speed learning allowed Ciel to temporarily set aside her thoughts, forget the dull ache in her brain, and the efficiency of mental recovery was actually higher.

Like rusty parts starting to turn again after adding lubricant, each grind between gears removing some rust.

Thinking activities like learning languages, which weren’t intense under the system skill’s enhancement, were more conducive to Ciel’s mental recovery.

About another ten minutes or so passed. The sound of wheels and horse hooves pressing on the stone road came from outside the house.

This sound temporarily pulled Ciel out of her learning state.

Knock knock knock—

Knocking sounded. Ciel went downstairs, opened the door, and received a new handbag from the maid.

After receiving it, Ciel returned to the living room, closed the main door, opened the handbag, and glanced inside.

Inside were about six hundred and fifty Su pound banknotes, and a letter clipped between the bills.

Ciel spent about 800 Su pounds when purchasing potions and Reconstitution Rituals. Items bought from Deton Manor were overpriced, only guaranteed to be genuine, quality wasn’t necessarily top-notch.

Avena only spent 650 Su pounds helping Ciel dispose of this potion. It was considered a relatively fair price, without adding extra money for Ciel.

But no service fee was charged either.

Ciel opened the letter. Inside was Avena’s reply, answering all the questions Ciel previously raised in her letter.

Avena seemed very curious why Ciel brought up her advancement, because Avena had just returned to the clinic today.

She briefly recounted today’s events in the letter, such as encountering the few third-tier transcendents who came to visit the clinic.

Ciel already knew those things. She skipped the idle chat at the beginning and focused on the Reconstitution Ritual Avena mentioned later.

The digestion of “Listener” wasn’t like other potions with a specific set of Reconstitution Rituals that could digest the potion by killing people or completing designated rituals.

Its ritual was more like prying into secrets, seeking the hidden stories behind various people, and required drinking the potion beforehand.

However, the “Listener” potion’s properties were relatively mild compared to other potions, without specific time limits.

If there had to be a limit, it was that you must complete the potion digestion before the whispers completely eroded your spirit.

Therefore, Avena acted together with the police department’s investigation department, digesting the “Listener” potion through “Detective” methods, finally completing the final digestion with Ciel’s assistance.

And progressing from “Listener” to “Psychologist” was quite a leap.

This also required drinking the potion beforehand to obtain part of the “Psychologist” abilities.

The target of the potion digestion ritual also changed from ordinary people at the first tier to transcendents.

One could continuously purify the spiritual pollution of first-tier transcendents, slowly accumulating potion digestion progress—but this method had side effects.

The “Listener’s” healing wasn’t cost-free. Each treatment, the “Listener” would directly face different whispers from each individual and suffer varying degrees of spiritual pollution. frёeωebɳovel.com

And the “Listener” herself couldn’t resolve her own spiritual pollution. Other “Listeners” or “Psychologists” of the same tier wouldn’t dare treat the spirit of someone on the same path—because they knew this would bring unimaginable, multi-type pollution upon themselves.

Accumulating like this, even if one successfully digested the “Psychologist” potion and became a second-tier transcendent, the possibility of further advancing to the third tier was basically completely cut off.

They would definitely be assimilated by the third-tier potion, completely changing their life form.

There was another method: directly cure or hypnotize a severe case of spiritual pollution or brainwashing. The specific pollution level was equivalent to a second-tier transcendent about to go mad.

The mental treatment Avena currently performed on ordinary people was also accumulating experience for this step.

So Avena was already preparing to drink the second-tier potion.

Ciel looked at the envelope before her, lost in thought.

Regarding this advancement condition, Ciel did think of a solution.

That is, directly have Avena, who had already drunk the second-tier “Psychologist” potion, treat herself after she entered the Other Side...

The spiritual pollution of the Other Side definitely exceeded the potion whispers of a second-tier transcendent. This intensity was still too great for Avena, easily leaving lasting mental effects.

Moreover, Avena in the simulation had already treated Ciel for Other Side pollution once.

But Avena didn’t digest the potion because of it. Instead, she was contaminated by the Other Side, her spiritual vision greatly enhanced, seeing the raven shadow.

Thinking about it, if it were useful, Avena would have treated Nia long ago. After all, Nia’s pollution was also related to the Other Side.

Thinking of this, Ciel couldn’t help but shake her head helplessly.

No wonder Avena was stuck for so long. Although Berren City was still rapidly developing and expanding, after a month, it only had 233,157 people. Finding a half-mad second-tier transcendent among them for treatment was too difficult.

Even catching a brainwashed cultist to reverse-brainwash back was difficult, because the cultists in Berren City had already been slaughtered by Ciel.

However, creating such a person was quite simple.

After all, Tara had plenty of confidants who fit this profile quite well.

For example, that second-tier noblewoman named Gemma, brainwashed by cultists.

Letting Avena independently remove the Divine Advent Church’s brainwashing on her might quickly increase Avena’s potion digestion progress.

All these still needed her simulated self to verify for Ciel.

Ciel opened the simulation, looked at the time inside.

【Future Days: 7 Days (Holy Year 741, July 1st, 20:00) (Cost: 10 Fate Points)】

【Past Days: 3 Days (Holy Year 741, June 21st, 00:01) (Cost: 10 Fate Points)】

【Old Days: ***, *** Days (???) (Cost: 10000 Fate Points)】

Seven days later... Then she would have already met Tara.

Ciel took out the “Endless Manual of Instant Forgetfulness,” continued writing on it, adding her speculations and the matter of helping Avena complete the Reconstitution Ritual.

Ciel originally wanted to let Avena try brainwashing Tara, freeing her from the Divine Advent Church’s control, but after thinking about it, decided against it.

Tara was too fanatical, and her worldview established throughout her life revolved around the Mother Goddess and the Divine Advent Church. If her worldview were forcibly reversed, Tara would likely suffer a mental breakdown.

It was better to have Tara call over some second-tier confidants who hadn’t been brainwashed for too long.

Soon, Ciel finished writing all the precautions and returned the sealed artifact manual to the system inventory.

Although she could indeed use Past Days simulation to return three days earlier and directly grab Kitty for Avena’s experiment, doing so would miss the detail of her simulated self collecting legal corpses for her.

Helping Avena advance and trying to lure out the quill pen sealed artifact—one of these two things had to succeed.

Next, was to wait for her spirit to recover a bit more...

Ciel pushed aside the book in her hand. She now had to use the limited time to recover more spirit. She had to try falling asleep again.

Using learning to recover spirit was forced when normal sleep was impossible. If she could sleep, it was still better to sleep a bit longer.

Ciel lay on the bed, closed her eyes, emptied her mind, slowed her breathing, letting herself slowly enter a state of sleep.

But this state of sleep only lasted for half an hour. Ciel abruptly opened her eyes in the darkness, the whites of her eyes already covered with a faint layer of bloodshot veins.

Only then did Ciel fully realize that her spirit had already suffered irreversible damage.