The Witch Hunter System
chapter-661

'In the past two days, we have noticed the members of the Delarosa Household have been paying visits to the Sacred Tirtha with increasing frequency. Although we have yet to learn the reason, we have also discovered that they were all people of high status in the Sacred Tirtha, Supreme Leader.'

'Not surprising, considering the Great Shaman is a Delarosa. In a sense, the Sacred Tirtha can be regarded as an extension of the Delarosa's power.'

'Speaking of the Great Shaman, Kuvat found something interesting while digging into the history of the Delarosa Household, Supreme Leader,' Chaezi suddenly recalled.

'Oh? Let's hear it then,' Vaan replied with intrigue.

'Yes, Supreme Leader,' Chaezi faithfully reported, 'According to Kuvat, Leimana Delarosa, the current Great Shaman who controls the Sacred Tirtha, encountered a problem during the fetal period and was born with an innate defect called the Broken Meridians Defect.'

'Supposedly, her meridians weren't evenly formed. Dozens of small areas within her meridians were either thinner or thicker than usual, leading to irregular blood flow and an overall weak constitution.'

'Someone with this kind of innate defect was supposed to be destined for a very short life. However, what's interesting is that not only is Leimana Delarosa still alive, she's not even a witch.'

'Leimana Delarosa…' Vaan contemplated.

According to the information they had gathered from their investigation, Leimana Delarosa was the previous matriarch of the Delarosa Household and the youngest daughter of Laeticia Delarosa.

Although Laeticia Delarosa was only the Fifth Elder in the Delarosa Household 300 years ago, the Supreme Elder, Galen Delarosa, was her father.

After Gehenna descended, Laeticia's father continued to hold the position of Supreme Elder in the family until the Sacred Tirtha was founded.

Once the status of shamans and witch doctors was established, Galen transferred his position of authority to his daughter and retired from household management over 270 years ago.

The Delarosa Household did not produce any outstanding warriors in its history, but it did train the most excellent shamans and witch doctors every generation.

Under Laeticia's management as the Supreme Elder, the Delarosa Household accumulated merit through its acts of life-saving grace and garnered respect from everyone, allowing it to become one of the top families in the empire despite its lack of power.

Laeticia's contributions allowed her daughter, Laemana, to replace the original head of the Delarosa Household and become the new matriarch 200 years ago.

Since then, Galen's family line has been the main branch in the Delarosa Household.

Moving forward, Laemana only led the Delarosa Household for a short fifty years before handing the matriarch position over to her daughter, Laelana, and then joining her mother, Laeticia, at the Sacred Tirtha.

After Laemana became the Great Shaman a hundred years ago, Laemana and Laelana's positions in the Sacred Tirtha and the Delarosa Household had not changed.

However, Laemana's grandfather and mother, Galen and Laeticia, had seemingly faded into obscurity.

Most people in the empire wouldn't find anything strange if they had read through the Delarosa Household's history. But when Vaan learned about it, he discovered one major point of alarm and suspicion.

While it seemed like the Delarosa Household had been in quite the spotlight, it had, in truth, been quite low-key.

After all, given the Delarosa Household's financial strength, how could it not produce any excellent warriors to guard their family's interests against exterior threats?

The Delarosa Household had made the whole empire believe it had given up power to entirely focus on playing a pivotal supporting role. Thus, in the eyes of the public, the Delarosa Household had no military power.

Many people even believed the Delarosa Household delved into the art of healing because of their strong desire to save ill-fated lives through life-prolonging means, and the reason why the current Great Shaman could live so long despite her innate defect was due to the fruit of their labor.

However, for any big family or clan, especially one as big as the Delarosa Household, it was nearly impossible for them not to care about power and the security it provided.

As such, if the Delarosa Household had been accumulating its strength in secret all these years without anyone knowing, it could only be described with one word – terrifying!

Furthermore, even if people knew or suspected the Delarosa Household had secretly raised a private military force, they still wouldn't believe it had anything to do with demons and Gehenna.

After all, the Delarosa Household was full of excellent shamans and witch doctors.

It was common knowledge that witches and demons were mortal enemies. They couldn't co-exist, let alone join hands and work together.

But…was that truly the case?

This so-called common knowledge of the bad relationship between witches and demons mainly referred to the Seven Witch Kingdoms and Gehenna, which wasn't much different from any other countries and their hostile neighbors.

The conflict between the Seven Witch Kingdoms and Gehenna was only much worse due to the differences in their races, beliefs, and power.

Besides the witches from the Seven Witch Kingdoms, most of the witches in other countries had not seen a demon from Gehenna, let alone killed one.

Since no prior hatred had been formed with the witches of other countries, who could confidently say the demons of Gehenna wouldn't try to recruit and convert them?

Nothing was definite.

In fact, it would even be easier for demons to convert the witches outside of the witch kingdoms into devil worshippers due to the persecution and discrimination against witches in other countries.

Vaan felt a chill when he thought of that.

'There hasn't been another great war since the first Holy War three hundred years ago, only small and medium skirmishes…' Vaan pondered with concern.

He couldn't imagine the consequences if these constant skirmishes only served as distractions for the Great Devils while their emissaries infiltrated Pangea to convert believers on their behalf in these past three hundred years.

Logically speaking, it had a very high possibility of being true. After all, the Great Devils fed on negative emotions, and faith power strengthened their divinity. It was the worst possible situation for humanity.

'We're fucked,' Vaan thought.

He couldn't stop the frogs from catching fire if they had already jumped into the ponds of burning oil.