What Witch? No, a Deadly Apothecary!

After years of surviving in a world not his own, Leon realizes that some paths offer no return—the staircase paved with bones leads only to a throne or a grave. In this realm, the Church of the Empire has strictly forbidden the production and smuggling of magic essence extracted from monsters, making it both a perilous and astronomically lucrative underground trade. Starting from absolute obscurity, Leon transforms fugitive witches—wanted heretics hunted by the Church—into his monster breeders and potion masters, gradually building a smuggling empire that spans the continent. Today, he is Viscount Aren, the most powerful lord in the Empire, a newly appointed cardinal of the Church, the chief inquisitor of the Heresy Tribunal, and the kingmaker behind the new emperor. Yet in the shadows, he operates under the alias Fenrir—the Empire’s most wanted criminal, its most infamous blasphemer, and a name that strikes terror into all who hear it. Countless witches whisper his name in the dark, revering him as their deliverer. But he still remembers the moment the gears of fate first turned. Back then, he was merely Leon Sette, a low-level inquisitor scraping by at the Church’s bottom rung. On the day he first met a real witch, with his pistol aimed at her head, everything began with a single sentence that altered the course of both their lives: "Miss Witch, would you be interested... in making a deal with me?"