No. 111 Undead Street, Night Post Office General Store.
She glanced at the old wall clock hanging on the wall.
It read 0:05.
Long Night had arrived, and the sky outside the general store was already pitch black.
Yet Bai Tang, who had gone out, still had not returned.
She refilled the human-skin lantern with lamp oil, lit it, and Claire pulled open the door of the general store. She hung the human-skin lantern on the rusty iron hook of the door frame.
Claire stood outside the door, her gaze piercing the endless darkness ahead. The end of the street was empty, not a single shadow in sight.
“Bai Tang… didn’t make it back?” Claire murmured softly.
The witch’s face remained expressionless, as if she had expected this outcome all along and felt no surprise whatsoever.
After all, she was only 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 struggle, let alone the unpredictable horrors that roamed everywhere.
Yet even though she knew Bai Tang would face danger outside, Claire felt no regret at all.
If she only hid passively within the safety of the general store, it was no different from already being dead. That day would come sooner or later anyway.
What she had done was simply speed up the timeline.
“Better go back to sleep.”
Claire spoke to herself.
If she could not return before Long Night, the chances of Bai Tang surviving the night and making it back to the general store were less than one in a thousand.
There seemed to be no point in waiting any longer.
“Haah~~”
Claire yawned, a tear forming at the corner of her eye, and turned to head back inside for rest.
Suddenly, something entered the range of her spiritual perception. She froze mid-turn, her entire body going rigid.
She looked toward the end of the dark street, her eyes filled with astonishment.
At the far end of the street, a petite girl’s figure had suddenly appeared. Her steps were slow and unsteady, one foot sinking deep while the other dragged shallowly. Her body swayed as she staggered forward.
At first glance, it looked as though she might trip over a small pebble at any second.
The straw hat Bai Tang had worn when she left during White Day was nowhere to be seen. Both arms hung limply at her sides as if injured. A dark, pitch-black object was clenched between her teeth.
Claire’s blood-red eyes glowed faintly. She could see clearly now—it was a revolver.
“She actually made it back alive.”
Her tone was perfectly calm, yet even Claire herself did not notice the corners of her mouth unconsciously lifting.
“Huff… ugh…”
Pain. Her whole body felt like it had been hit by a truck and was about to fall apart!
She was covered in wounds. Bai Tang staggered forward, breathing heavily.
Even now, when she thought back on everything she had just gone through, Bai Tang still did not know how she had survived.
It was not quite a deathbed flashback, but it did remind her of her childhood back on Earth.
Any kid who had grown up in the countryside like Bai Tang would have had the exact same experience: finally getting to visit a classmate’s village on a rare weekend, only to be chased and bitten on the pant leg by the village’s unfriendly mad dog.
After Long Night fell, the ghouls that leaped out onto the streets were every bit as frantic.
If not for the potion she had taken out during White Day and the Demon Hunter Revolver sponsored by the Demon Hunter girl, Bai Tang estimated she would have been gnawed down to nothing but bone fragments by now.
She lifted her head and looked in the direction of the general store.
The human-skin lantern that signaled the store was open had already been hung on the iron hook, its light stingily illuminating only a small area.
And right there, within the circle of lantern light, a figure stood quietly waiting—her witch teacher.
The remaining distance was only about a hundred meters, yet it felt extraordinarily long.
The only thing that struck her as strange was that the pack of ghouls that usually lingered outside the general store at this hour had vanished, as if frightened by something. They had all hidden away.
Fifty meters. Thirty meters. Ten meters. Five meters…
Until finally, within arm’s reach, Bai Tang stepped into the lantern’s glow. Under the light, Claire could clearly see the girl’s current wretched state.
Her clothes had been torn open by the ghouls’ sharp claws. Blood kept seeping from the wounds and soaking the fabric. Both arms showed signs of having been in a fight—scratches and bite marks everywhere.
Bacterial toxins had invaded the flesh of her arms, severing the sensory nerves. She could not even lift them.
The look in the girl’s eyes suggested she wanted to say something.
But with the revolver clenched between her teeth, she could only swallow hard, unable to make a sound.
Seeing this, Claire removed the revolver from the girl’s mouth and waited silently. A weak smile finally tugged at Bai Tang’s pale face as she spoke.
“Teacher… I’m… back.”
The moment the words left her mouth, it was as if the last bit of strength in her body had been released. Her legs went soft, and she collapsed into Claire’s arms.
Everything went black before her eyes, and she fainted completely.
【Congratulations on completing the quest ‘Deliver the Letter’.】
【Quest rewards received: Experience +250, Ghost Coins ×250, and the recognition of your teacher, the witch ‘Claire Charlotte’.】
“Who gave you the nerve to dirty my clothes? You’re nothing but a little Bai Tang.” The witch’s eyes curved in a smile even as she pretended to be displeased.
………
Late at night, inside the Night Post Office General Store.
Consciousness gradually returned. The emptiness before her eyes faded, and Bai Tang slowly opened them. What she saw was the wooden ceiling of the general store.
It was familiar, yet somehow strange.
Bai Tang quickly realized this was not her own storage-room-turned-bedroom. Her bed was not this soft, nor did it carry the faint, pleasant scent she smelled now.
Her windowless room should have carried the musty odor of damp wooden furniture.
“You’re awake?”
The door to the room was pushed open. Claire stood in the doorway, holding a large iron pot in her arms as if she had just come from the back kitchen.
A big iron spoon kept stirring inside the pot. Occasionally she added what looked like the mucus of some soft-bodied creature. Was she brewing medicine?
“Teacher…”
“There is still a large amount of ghoul toxin in your body. I’m making a special antidote that should work.” Claire reminded her. “Since you’re awake, don’t go back to sleep. Rest after you take the medicine.”
“But my whole body hurts so much…”
“This is a general store, not a clinic. We don’t have anesthetics, so you’ll just have to endure it.”
For some reason, Bai Tang felt like she had heard her teacher say something very similar before.
She did not ask why she was in her teacher’s room. Thinking about it, her own room was simply too rundown and unsuitable for treating injuries.
“Teacher, can I still be saved?”
Having finally made it back to the general store, Bai Tang was still very afraid of dying.
“Uh… hard to say. After all, even the most powerful witch can’t guarantee a 100% success rate when brewing medicine.”
As she spoke, the corners of Claire’s mouth curved upward.
Because of that, Bai Tang could not tell whether her witch teacher was teasing her or simply stating the most realistic situation.
She hoped it was the former—like a mischievous girl’s joke or something. She did not want to die so soon.