What Witch? This Alchemist is Breaking Bad!

After transmigrating to this world and scraping by for many years, Leon finally realized that some paths, once taken, offer no way back. The stairway paved with countless white bones leads only to a throne—or to a grave. Because the Imperial Church explicitly forbade it, the production and smuggling of mana extracted from magical beasts became a trade that was both perilous and immensely profitable. Thus, starting as an obscure nobody, he trained the witches wanted by the Church into his own monster handlers and apothecaries, and built a smuggling empire that spanned the continent. Today, he is Viscount Arend—one of the most powerful lords of the Empire, a newly appointed cardinal of the Church, the Grand Inquisitor of the Inquisition, and a key supporter of the new emperor. At the same time, in the shadows, the name Fenrir resounds throughout the underworld. He is the Empire’s most highly bountied fugitive, the most infamous blasphemer, and the most fearsome danger spoken of in whispers—countless witches singing his name in the dark. Yet he still remembers the moment when the gears of fate first began to turn. Back then, he was merely Leon·Set, a low-level inquisitor muddling along at the bottom of the Church. That day, he encountered a true witch for the first time. When he raised his gun and aimed it at her head, everything began with a single sentence that would alter the course of their lives: “Miss Witch… would you be interested in making a deal with me?”