The Speedrun Manual of Miss Witch - Chapter 287

Cora’s corpse was already highly decomposed. Her bones and muscles were so fragile that they would crumble with the slightest touch, making long-distance transport unsuitable.

Under Avena’s instructions, Ciel carefully picked up Cora’s skull and placed it nearby on the dining table, which had been cleared.

“I need… to ensure her brain is intact. If possible, it would be best to completely peel off her eyeballs…” Avena had no practical experience with corpses, so she could only tell Ciel her requirements and have Ciel assist.

To ensure foolproof execution, Ciel had Tara call Adele over. Though Adele’s main focus was potion-making, her practical experience with the human body surpassed anyone else’s present.

While waiting for Adele to arrive, Avena prepared the instruments. Ciel, meanwhile, used tweezers to meticulously peel back Cora’s scalp, then delicately fractured the brittle skull, lifting away the fragments—

This process was like peeling a raw eggshell without breaking the membrane. The slightest tremor of the hand would cause the thick yellow and white liquid inside to flow out. It was delicate work.

Fortunately, Ciel had some experience in craniotomy.

By the time Adele was brought to the dining room, Ciel had largely separated Cora’s hair, flesh, and bone from her head.

Adele had originally come with excitement, having been invited to Ciel’s house. She had even skipped her already prepared dinner and brought some pastries as a gift.

But when she walked into the dining room, filled with a strong smell of blood, she was completely bewildered.

The people around the dining table had varied expressions. At this moment, they all looked in unison at Adele, who had just entered through the doorway. A strange and oppressive atmosphere instantly enveloped Adele.

For a moment, she had a hallucination that Ciel was merely meticulously preparing some ingredients, but the strong stench of decay at her nose reminded her that everything before her was real.

Gulp—

Adele swallowed hard. Her original hunger completely vanished. She held the greaseproof paper bag containing pastries in front of her with both hands, standing in place, somewhat at a loss.

Due to confidentiality, Tara had not told Adele why she was coming, but Adele was probably the only one who truly thought she was coming for a big meal.

“Adele,” Ciel beckoned to Adele and said, “Can you completely remove her eyeballs? Her body is severely decomposed. I don’t know the condition of the eyeballs, so I didn’t dare to act rashly.”

“Oh, oh… okay…” With Ciel’s instruction, Adele was no longer as bewildered as when she first entered. She handed the things in her hands to Tara beside her, then quickly walked to Ciel’s side.

She also noticed the headless female corpse still lying on the floor, but perhaps because she had been exposed to corpses so much, Adele didn’t seem to be afraid of these things anymore.

She didn’t know what had happened here, nor did she know what Ciel was doing. She only knew that Ciel needed her help now, and that was all.

Once the situation exceeded Adele’s capacity to process, she would choose to stop thinking and completely trust Ciel—colloquially, she was “overloaded.”

“Hand me the tweezers.” After taking the tweezers from Ciel’s hand, Adele took a deep breath and carefully touched the corpse’s eyeball with the back of the tweezers.

With just a light touch, the eyeball seemed on the verge of decaying. In such a condition, trying to completely peel off the optic nerve with tweezers was probably unrealistic.

Adele directly opened her coat and took out a few small boxes from the several arranged inside. She opened them directly on a nearby table.

Each box contained small potion bottles about the thickness of two human pinky fingers. After selecting a few potions, she seemed to want to confirm something and looked at Ciel, asking, “Just the complete eyeball is fine?”

Ciel looked at Avena beside her. Avena, at this moment, had already filled a clean plate with a layer of pale blue medicinal liquid. She looked in Adele’s direction and nodded, “Yes, to construct a soul link, this is needed… just one is enough.”

“If it truly cannot be removed, it’s fine. It just means we won’t be able to ‘read’ it.”

“Alright.” Adele nodded. She seemed to have connected some dots and asked, “If two eyeballs cannot be removed intact, then one, or a part?”

“That works.” Avena nodded.

Adele quickly prepared the liquid in her hands, mixing several potions together and pouring them into a glass wine cup. When the last bottle of clear potion dripped into the wine cup, a large amount of white mist billowed out from the cup.

Adele’s expression was focused. She inserted the tweezers in her hand into the glass cup. The metal tweezers quickly became covered with a layer of pale blue ice crystals.

Then, she gently probed Cora’s eyeball with the ice-crystal-covered tweezers. This time, after the tweezers touched the eyeball, there was no oozing of pus.

Soon, two cold-emitting eyeballs were removed by Adele and placed on the plate Avena had prepared earlier.

The two eyeballs floated on the pale blue liquid, emitting white mist.

Under the corrosion of the liquid, the original eyeballs began to rapidly dissolve. At this point, Avena stepped forward, took out a small knife, and directly pricked her thumb.

A drop of fresh blood seeped from her thumb. Avena’s eyes flickered with a pale purple halo. She raised her hand and directly drew strange linking runes in the empty space between the plate and the brain.

The bloody runes linked the brain to the plate. Under the corrosion of the liquid, all the structures of the eyeballs collapsed. The turbid vitreous humor made the entire plate of liquid murky.

The viscous solution in the plate began to creep against gravity towards the edge of the plate, slowly moving along the blood-drawn runes until it completely connected with Cora’s brain.

Cora’s brain, which had been completely devoid of any sign of life, began to pulsate again, as if it had new life.

“Resurrected…?” Adele, seeing this scene for the first time, was somewhat stunned.

Although she heard that “Reborns” indeed have some methods to reactivate the brains of brain-dead people, she had never witnessed it firsthand—and it wasn’t even from a “Reborn,” but a “Soul Walker.”

“No…” Avena shook her head. She looked at Ciel and asked, “Do you want to personally view her memories?”

“Yes.” Ciel nodded.

Among everyone here, she had the highest resistance to the Other Side. Probing Cora’s memories might touch upon the Other Side, so Ciel had to do it herself.

“Are you ready?” Avena asked.

“Mm.” Ciel nodded, took two steps forward, and walked to Avena’s side.