Chapter 1081 – #257_The Witch Of Libra (3)
#1075
1.
There have been a total of two times when his subconscious surfaced after being suppressed by Duke Keter.
Once during the battle with Bianca Bellili, the Witch of Desire.
And once during the ‘Trial’ in the Kingdom of Nukelavi.
Each time, the gap between Siwoo and his subconscious narrowed.
Although it was a limited situation, he even managed to subdue it during the trial.
The Witch of Souls warned that ‘there would be no next time,’ but it wasn’t strange to think that he might be able to subdue it if this trend continued.
But he realizes how naive that assumption was.
A gift from Periwinkle, who had transformed into a four-leaf clover after causing all sorts of ups and downs with his great aunt at Pink Clover.
Siwoo used that clover to enter a state of suspended animation, twisting the ‘door’ to intentionally awaken his subconscious.
His subconsciousness surges through the narrow door.
Egos, ideologies, and perspectives that are so different that they cannot possibly be his own subconscious mix together.
At the same time, he felt the danger.
This guy is a monster.
Even though he has grown so much, even though he has overcome countless adversities and continued to train, he feels like he will be crushed by its immensity.
“Let’s take it easy…”
Siwoo and the Shin Siwoo in his subconscious have different directions they pursue.
Siwoo’s greatest ability is ‘intuition,’ while the Shin Siwoo in his subconscious is ‘calculation.’
If he accepts everything from his subconscious in its current state, he will surely not be able to return.
He will use it only as much as he needs, only as much as will help in this battle.
When the liberated subconscious had eroded about 30% of his consciousness, he forcefully suppressed and suppressed the door.
What he needs is not its methodology.
Only its calculation ability.
“……”
Lydia was quietly watching Shin Siwoo.
It wasn’t because of the villain’s kind heart to wait for his transformation.
It was because she needed to pay close attention, as he was hiding his final move.
Variables were the number one thing Lydia wanted to eliminate in battle.
The strong have a unique aura.
Without needing to discuss the magic field of a great witch or the gravity of prayer, it was a unique charisma that could only be discerned by accumulated experience.
The current Shin Siwoo is ‘different.’
He may not be as dangerous as his most feared enemy, as he said, but it is clear that he is no longer an opponent to be taken lightly.
“What should I do…”
Lydia was confident in her own strength.
Excluding the pink peacock, who could only be described as out of the norm, she was the strongest among the 23rd tier.
She was at a level where she could hold her own against Duke Errelim, the only known 24th tier, head-on.
Well, if luck was on her side, she could even hope for victory.
That was Lydia’s strength, viewed objectively.
-Woo-oong!
A red barrier spread around the golden garden that Lydia had summoned.
The golden garden itself was Lydia’s other-dimensional barrier for storing gold coins, so it must mean that Shin Siwoo was creating another layer of barrier.
In other words, it meant that they were creating a battlefield from which they could not leave ‘until one of them died’ or ‘until both of them gave up the fight.’
That is, now is the only time to leave.
She could give up the captured R’lyeh, give up the delicious Shin Siwoo in front of her, and gain safety at the cost of half of her gold coins.
She could summon ‘Las Werfanas,’ who had not all gathered yet since the order was given, and clean up the mess in Hexennacht and plan for the future.
That was the safest option.
On the other hand, if she fought, Lydia would probably have to risk her life, and that was one of the things Lydia hated the most.
Gambling was an act of taking risks for a windfall that was beyond the means of those who had nothing.
It was a story that had nothing to do with the great Lydia Magnus.
“No, I can’t. I can’t stand it.”
But this greed showed no signs of subsiding.
The barrier was complete, and the two stood facing each other.
“Bloom.”
“Prove it.”
In the midst of a flurry of golden particles, the end of a long and bitter relationship began.
2.
Poison moths fly in.
A swarm of not tens or hundreds, but thousands upon thousands, fly towards only one person.
Even the weak flapping of wings can create a roar like a storm when there are so many of them.
Lydia’s ultimate weapon, the poison moths, could decide the outcome with just a single touch, but in this battle, they were extras.
-Swish! Swish!
Shin Siwoo, flying through the air leading tens of thousands of poisonous insects, showed no signs of being defeated by such magic.
Shin Siwoo, hovering in the air wearing armor, cut down all the poison moths blocking his path, circling around Lydia like a kite looking for prey.
“That’s quite a sight.”
For a brief moment, Lydia’s attention was diverted by the swarms of moths scattering in the air.
-Whoosh!
Shin Siwoo’s figure disappeared.
As the swarm of poison moths that had lost their target hesitated, she felt a strange sensation of space distorting behind her.
-Kwaaang!
“You have a lot of tricks up your sleeve?”
“So do you.”
Lydia, who had predicted that Shin Siwoo had the ability to close the distance in an instant after seeing the close chase, easily blocked the attack by creating a wall of ‘Flames of Annihilation.’
Distortion and value.
The clash of concepts and concepts.
-Kiiing!!!
Flames that sought to corrode and annihilate all values collided in mid-air with red branches that emitted a red, ominous aura, pushing and pulling against each other.
-Whirrr!
At the same time, ‘Strings of Contradiction’ spread like spiderwebs in the air, trying to entangle Siwoo, and Siwoo’s ribbons, in response, intertwined in the air like threads being knitted.
The reason why the battle was not yet so intense was that it was a reconnaissance battle from Lydia’s point of view, and a time of adjustment from Siwoo’s point of view.
It had been only 10 minutes since he had reached the 23rd tier by stepping on the stairs and jumping over the walls.
The process of holding onto his reason to avoid being devoured by his subconscious.
And yet, the triple burden of having to combine two different tech trees into one.
Including the fact that he had ‘distorted’ his half-collapsed body to barely make it battle-ready, it was a quadruple burden.
It felt like he was recklessly speeding on a monster-tuned bike without any prior practice.
“Are you stalling for time?”
Lydia accurately caught that subtle point.
Shin Siwoo had done something, and he was not properly controlling the power he had gained in exchange for that something.
So, she decided that now was the time.
-Clink, clink
Gold coins scattered with a clear sound.
Pillars of fire rose from where the gold coins had fallen.
The flames, burning like hellfire, resolutely and arrogantly denied the existence of everything except Lydia.
A law that transcended the principles of the world and the order of nature.
A being that had broken free from the shackles and reached the realm of transcendence.
She declared them insignificant and annihilated them.
“Kuh!”
Just being near the pillars of fire, without directly touching them, made his symbolic system dangerously unstable.
It was fortunate that Siwoo’s magic was not overly reliant on ‘symbols.’
-Whoosh!
The pillars of fire closed in, blocking his escape routes.
From the moment she confirmed Siwoo’s space-shifting ability, poison moths were naturally placed throughout the battlefield to hinder his movement.
Countless strands of golden strings were spread like a net in advance on the only escape route.
A style that gradually gains the upper hand by reducing the opponent’s options one by one.
It was a tricky style, just as Dorothy had told him.
But what was most concerning was something else.
A blunt spear was floating above Lydia’s head.
It was more like a stake, and it was spinning in place, following Siwoo’s movements, aiming its tip at her.
She didn’t know what effect it had.
Dorothy had never been able to figure out the effect of that stake.
But the eerie aura emanating from its tip restricted her from acting rashly.
“……”
Even by eye, it seemed impossible to handle Lydia in his current state.
There was no choice.
Siwoo opened the door that had been tightly sealed between his subconscious and consciousness just a little bit more.
He allowed the subconscious to erode from about 30% to 50%.
“Bloom.”
At that moment, the subconscious, as if it had been waiting, broke free from Siwoo’s control and created a new formula.
It forced Siwoo’s signature, which linked the three magnetic magic he had learned this time, in a way that he had never predicted.
The materials were the Angel’s Ring.
The Angel’s Ring.
The Angel’s Ring.
Not mixing three different magics, but creating an absurd explosion by linking the same magnetic magic three times.
-Kiiiiiiiiing!!!!
Amidst the sound of the fiercely rotating rings that echoed like tinnitus, his vision turned white with a pain that felt like his cerebral blood vessels were about to burst.
His entire body’s magic circuits were burning to their limits, and he barely managed to control it with ‘distortion.’
Even that was not enough, and blood gushed from his throat and trickled down his mouth.
“What?”
Lydia’s horrified cry did not even reach Siwoo’s ears.
He was just vividly realizing it.
To it, life had no value.
It was just a machine that was satisfied if it could reach a higher level for even a second.
He also realized.
The violent talent that even a witch’s trained spirit could not handle.
If that calculation ability, which was closer to a curse, was combined with Siwoo’s intuition, he wondered how far he could go.
“Bloom.”
The subconscious did not stop there.
It used the Angel’s Ring, which had been overclocked with three amplifications, as it was.
This time, it used three consecutive amplifications in a row.
-Crack!
The pain of all the blood vessels in his body bursting at once.
He could hear the sound of his teeth breaking as he clenched them tightly to endure the pain.
What he saw in his vision, which had turned red, was…
A discharge of magic that he had never seen anywhere before.
An amount of magic that even several R’lyeh could not release was exploding around Siwoo’s body with an unprecedented, unrealistic purity.
-Kwa-ga-ga-ga-gak!!!
The pure, concentrated magic was blocking the ‘Flames of Annihilation.’
It was a miracle made possible because the speed at which the magic was amplified and bloomed was faster than the speed at which the flames annihilated the magic.
But such magic was not something that a human body could contain.
It was more like a deadly poison flowing through his blood vessels.
What was holding his body, which was collapsing in real time, was a recovery through ‘distortion,’ which was nothing more than a forced measure.
No, he didn’t know if he could even call it recovery.
It was just a temporary fix for a machine that was being broken by being overclocked too much.
“There’s a limit to how crazy you can be.”
Lydia was staring in disbelief at the sight of her proud magic being blocked by something as simple as a ‘magic discharge.’
Putting aside how he had done it, it was easy to see that it was a suicidal act.
But at the same time, she recognized it.
Even if it was a suicidal act, not just anyone could achieve such a wonder.
Shin Siwoo had the ‘status’ to become her most feared enemy and stood before Lydia.
“Interesting.”
Even as she sensed that today might be her last day, Lydia smiled.
Lydia hated gambling.
But the reason she had come this far was that she had never lost once when she sat at the gambling table.
