City ​​of Witches 1056

Chapter 1056 – #251_The Story After Death (2)

#1050

1.
Two weeks had passed since then.

A club with booming EDM music.

The water from the sprinklers pouring down like rain and the billowing foam were impressive.
Inside, young men and women in swimsuits, practically naked, rubbing against each other, were quite a sight.

In the VVIP room overlooking the stage, where people were dancing wildly under the influence of drugs and alcohol, Lydia was contentedly sipping her drink.

Lydia Magnus, the Witch of Gold, was in a very good mood.

This plan had been quite successful.

After Psyche was ousted and Lydia once again took the reins of the Solidus Trading Company, she initiated a project to solidify her support base.

That was to deal with the betrayer of Hexennacht, the Witch of the Sword, and the Witch of the Path.

Nominally, it was an emotional propaganda that did not tolerate traitors, but it was a product of thoroughly calculated reason.

A direct confrontation with Gehenna was still a burden.
The same went for the Witch Points under Gehenna.

Unless it was a small town somewhere on the outskirts, it was better to minimize casualties in a place where a close friend of Duke Tiferet was the branch manager.

Lydia wanted a moderate level of tension and conflict.

If she had attacked a Gehenna witch or a Witch Point witch, it would have naturally caused public outrage.

But what if they were public enemies?

No matter how much they had defected, those sanctimonious Gehenna fools wouldn’t care about the lives of public enemies who were practically prisoners.
If that wasn’t the case, the two would have long since joined Gehenna.

Linne and Dorothy were thus the designated targets.

It would have been nice if she could have extracted their imprints as well, but the key to this operation was speed.
She only managed to inflict a fatal wound on Linne and kill Dorothy.

That alone was a sufficient achievement.

Hexennacht, which had been faltering due to a series of difficulties, was further united by the victory, which naturally led to a higher evaluation of Lydia Magnus.

“Still, they had pretty faces.”

Lydia recalled the memories she had shared with Dorothy in this room when she was held hostage.

She was a friend who was quite fun to talk to.
She was also well-versed in the underground business, and above all, she didn’t seem intimidated, which she liked.

They might have become good friends.

But now, they would never see each other again.

“For Dorothy.”

Lydia, who was toasting by herself, checked her vibrating phone.
The caller ID was not displayed, as it was a satellite call, but it was obvious who it was.

The vibration itself seemed to convey a sense of impatience.

“She’s so damn impatient.”

For this project, Lydia had taken extra precautions.

Instead of directly mobilizing the forces of the Solidus Trading Company or the New Qliphoth within Hexennacht, she had hired external mercenaries.

It was the ‘Lehar Group,’ a war mercenary group consisting of former Qliphoth members, including the previous Qliphoth.

Even if they were Qliphoth members who lived only for today, they did not directly intervene in every conflict and dispute.
The greater the stakes and the more intense the conflict, the more reluctant they were to get involved.

In such cases, the Lehar Group was an excellent proxy.
If they were paid enough, they would jump into even the most dangerous jobs.

The timing was especially good.

After the Flood, the ‘sluice gates’ had dried up the homunculus seeds all over the world.
The Lehar Group, which had been making money by subjugating homunculi at the request of third-world countries, had also seen their income dry up.

Lydia had used her immense financial power to entice them, and even the reckless Lehar Group had been willing to take on a politically risky operation.

“Yes, this is Lydia Magnus, the Witch of Trust.”
[Ms. Magnus, the success fee is too late. You’re not thinking of changing your mind now, are you?]

Her gruff voice, not befitting a witch, was full of undisguised aggression.

It was ‘Herya Valhiriye, the Witch of War,’ the leader of the group.

“Calm down, Herya. The Solidus Trading Company always honors its contracts…”
[If I see any sign of you trying to pull a fast one, I’ll sink every one of your merchant ships. Shut your mouth and give me the mining rights now.]

“Tsk.”
[You little bitch, do you think I don’t know your tricks? I’m even taking bullets for you, and you’re late on the payment? What kind of bullshit is that?]

It was true.

If Gehenna officially took issue with this, the Lehar Group would be the first filter.
That was also the reason for the subcontract.

“We both knew what we were getting into, didn’t we? The local government in South Sudan is demanding a cut, what do you want me to do? It’s just delayed, it’s going smoothly. Just wait patiently, you mutt.”
[So you’re going to use me and then wash your hands of it? Should I go and kill them all? Should I kill half of them every day that passes?]
“That’s your problem. Just wait a week…”

Herya ended the call abruptly with a loud curse.

Lydia sighed and then suddenly fell into thought again.
It was a memory that had come to her mind quite unintentionally.

When Lydia was negotiating with Dorothy as a hostage, she received a call from Shin Siwoo.

He had made an absurd threat to Lydia.

‘If this is a trap, and something happens to my lover because of it, I will find you.’
‘No matter what impossible danger or crisis I face, I will survive and become your most feared enemy. I will definitely do that. So…’
‘Behave yourself.’

The reason why that absurd threat suddenly came to mind must be because Dorothy, who was a hostage at the time, had died.

Lydia chuckled as she had done back then.

2.
As is typical of public enemy groups, the Lehar Group was not a tightly knit organization.

It would be absurd if public enemies, each driven by their own desires and greed, formed a stable system.

Therefore, the Lehar Group was a network of cells with several teams.

Normally, they would each do their own thing, but when a request was made, they would form a task force to carry it out, and once the mission was over, they would scatter.

The three witches who had rented out a high-end bar in Medellin, Colombia, were also part of the Lehar Group’s Nile team.

Normally, they would have had a party for a day or two after a mission, but this victory was particularly sweet.
It was just an attack on a branch, but they had received such a large reward and spoils.

As a result, they had been partying for two weeks.

“Boss, is it okay to order such expensive stuff?”
“Drink more. We made a lot of money this time, right?”
“I guess so. Let’s order more drugs while we’re at it. The strong stuff.”

Nile, the leader of the team, was a 20th-rank Great Witch.
The other two were also 19th and 18th rank, respectively, and were proven to be skilled.

“I wish we had this kind of job every time.”
“Who doesn’t?”

The Witch of the Path and the Witch of the Sword.

Both were strong opponents that they didn’t want to face, but this mission was close to a freebie.
The entire elite force of the Lehar Group had been mobilized to hunt down just the two of them.

The mission was too easy, and the reward was enormous.

“I heard that the head of the Solidus Trading Company commissioned the mission generously.”
“Lydia is known to have a lot of money. Should we have a toast?”
“To the rich nouveau riche!”

Nile raised her glass with a sarcastic toast.

“To…”

It was the moment when the team member sitting across from her was about to raise her glass.

-Swish!

A red afterimage flashed past her face faster than the sound.
The sight of her team member ‘Tanya’ being flung sideways, as if she had been hit by a siege crossbow, was like slow motion.

-Kuwagwagwang!

Wall decorations scattered, and tables and chairs tumbled.
When she turned her gaze to the side, she saw Tanya, whose heart had been pierced by a red spear, twitching as she died.

“S, s… sa… save…”

It seemed as if her autonomous defense was trying to activate several times, like the struggles of a dying insect, but it was probably hopeless.

-Whoosh!

At the same time, an otherworldy barrier spread from the tip of the red spear.

It was a textbook ambush.
If they had deployed the otherworldy barrier from the beginning and attacked, it would have lost its meaning as an ambush, so they deployed the barrier at the same time as the first strike.

It was a sudden attack, but Nile and the other surviving team member, ‘Mary,’ reacted so quickly that it could be called a reflex.

There was no sign of panic or shock.
They were not mediocre witches, but war professionals who had been through battlefields where life and death were at stake.

They immediately raised their magical power and turned their gaze in the direction from which the spear had flown.

“Guh!”

Taking advantage of the moment when their attention was diverted, ribbons wrapped around Mary’s neck and arms.
The origin of the ribbons was the shadow cast by the red spear and Tanya’s corpse.

The ribbons, which had wrapped around her entire body like a carnivorous plant in a split second, were tightly constricting her.

“B, boss… ugh!”

Mary tried to shake them off, but the strange force field that was constantly emitted from the ribbons robbed her of her resistance.

In the end, Mary, whose bones were crushed all over her body, was dragged into the floor as if she had been kidnapped by a tentacle monster, and her neck was broken in vain without even uttering a death cry.

Nile, her eyes wide open, looked at the dark corner of the bar, where the first spear had been thrown.

“Who the hell are you?”

Unlike her cold and calm demeanor, her mind was quite complex.

She had lost two subordinates in an instant.
But she didn’t really care about that.

They were just useful pawns anyway.

But who? Why? How?
None of the questions had a clear answer.

-Clank clank

The attacker revealed himself.

His appearance reminded Nile of a homunculus.

Red armor and a red spear covering his entire body. The Red Knight, who was said to be the worst homunculus ever.
Like Duke Tiferet, he was a walking natural disaster.

If that was the case, Nile had no chance of winning.
Many witches had confidently stepped forward and lost their lives to that spear.

But she immediately denied it.

“Have you been having fun?”

Homunculi didn’t speak human language.

Besides, when she looked closely, it wasn’t completely red armor like the Red Knight’s.
It only looked that way because a red glow was flowing like blood vessels over the black armor.

A beautiful lotus flower, as if carved from crystal, was floating around his shoulder, slowly absorbing an unidentified energy.

Nile guessed his identity.
Shin Siwoo, a male witch, Duke Tiferet’s disciple.

“You should have.＂

He held the spear in his hand, which she didn’t know when he had retrieved.
A golden glow flowed down from one side of his helmet as if it was exploding.

“Because all that’s left for you is pain.”

It was a terrifyingly intense glare that burned even in the pitch-black darkness.