Chapter 1167 – #278_Skirmish
#1161
1.
Witches are strange beings, difficult to understand with human sensibilities.
This didn’t change much even after the Trinity Academy’s administrator became the head of the Witch Society.
They can choose an infinite life, yet they give it up.
It’s not about giving up a life of groaning and painting weird things on the walls in their old age.
They possess an immortal beauty that could captivate anyone, wealth that most commoners would envy, and mysteries beyond human power, yet the moment they acknowledge their limits, they humbly pass on their legacy to future generations and depart.
What’s most peculiar is that the entire ‘Witch Society’ implicitly agrees to this lonely farewell.
Of course, there are many other things that are hard to understand.
Like my mother-in-law, who spends billions on alcohol in a single month, no matter how rich she is, or the witches of the Red Roof Salon, who fight over whether my necklace is prettier or my brooch is prettier, or the public figures who chant that the light of their lives is only magic, and grind both humans and witches equally to practice the Black Star Great Law…
Or Linne, who was pondering while lining up adult-sized baby products on the sofa.
“……”
“……”
“……”
Most witches are full of individuality.
Even just looking at Siwoo’s lovers, each had their own unique quirks.
Among them, Linne’s quirk was summarized in one word: ‘daddy play,’ which Siwoo accepted with a shrug.
Love and affection are quite closely related to that word, ‘shrug.’
However.
“This is a bit….”
Siwoo’s mind reflexively conjures up Linne’s baby costume.
This naturally contrasted with her first meeting.
Linne, who wielded dual swords with the self-magnetic magic ‘Black and White World,’ showing why she was given the nickname ‘Sword Demon.’
And then, Linne, who was babbling and sucking on a pacifier while shaking a rattle-like dual sword on the bed.
This was far beyond the realm of ‘shrug,’ it was abnormal, clearly abnormal….
“Kuh!”
Siwoo barely held onto his collapsing mind, having glimpsed into the abyss.
His face was as white as a sheet of paper.
Especially as a father-to-be.
“It’s a misunderstanding.”
Linne was even whiter.
Linne, who was looking around, shook Sharon as if she was about to strangle her.
“Sharon. Quickly. Quickly. Explain. Clarify.”
“Huh? Huh? What, ah!”
“T-This is, Siwoo… Linne-nim asked me to prepare it. She said she wanted to be a daughter like Malika….”
“No! That’s not it!”
The result of the combination of Linne, who looked the most desperate she had ever been in her life, and Sharon, who still hadn’t cleared up the misunderstanding, could be summarized in three words.
A total mess.
Sharon had completely misunderstood Linne’s request, and Linne had only just realized Sharon’s misunderstanding, so there was no way a proper explanation could be made.
It was as if Sharon had unintentionally fired a dignity-erasing bullet at Linne.
“It’s true, my husband! I didn’t want this!”
Linne, who wouldn’t even blink an eye while staring at an enemy even if a killing magic grazed her cheek, had no resistance to this kind of attack, as could be seen from how Dorothy teased her every day.
“Ah! Come to think of it, I suddenly have urgent business!”
“Don’t go! Explain properly!”
Sharon, who had left the biggest stain on Linne’s half-millennium life, eventually couldn’t hold on and chose to flee.
It was because Sharon’s empathy-shame tolerance index had hit rock bottom.
Linne, who was staring blankly at Sharon’s retreating figure, looked at Siwoo with a fearful expression.
She was sure to be despised.
If it had been a completely random situation, Linne would have been more confident, but hadn’t there been countless daddy plays last night?
A plausible cause and effect had been attached to this terrible misunderstanding.
If her husband looked at her as if she were mentally ill, she would surely shrink without being able to put up a proper defense.
“Linne-nim.”
But unexpectedly, Siwoo was wearing a benevolent smile that resembled Buddha.
Siwoo, who had initially panicked, had composed himself.
Right.
Everyone has a darkness they want to hide.
In fact, Siwoo didn’t go around openly talking about it, but he was turned on by the five sisters’ sister-rice bowl.
Dorothy’s beast play, Amelia’s assistant professor role-play, punishing the clumsy maid Sharon outdoors, the court-rank reversal ‘water-style magic in a place without water’ play with Lulue, and the ‘today I’m the teacher’ play with his teacher.
All of them were things that were a little embarrassing to show to others.
Siwoo had unintentionally stumbled upon and opened Pandora’s Box.
What was the right attitude to take in front of a flustered lover?
“Ah, say it.”
“……”
Siwoo put a pacifier in Linne’s mouth.
Linne, who had already realized that an explanation was impossible, sat down with a thud, her eyes devoid of light, sucking on the pacifier.
“Linne-nim, I understand everything. Being different from others doesn’t make you weird. You’re just a little special.”
“……”
“I’ll try my best too.”
Siwoo picked up Linne and sat her on his lap.
It might look funny and bizarre to others.
But if this was Linne’s unspoken wish, he would do his best to assist her.
Siwoo suppressed the goosebumps and chills of revulsion and weirdness, and started to dote on Linne in a high-pitched tone, as if she were Malika.
“Ooh, ooh, ooh! Our Linne is so cute!”
“……”
“Her eyes are round, and her nose is so cute! How can she be so cute!”
“……”
“Daddy’s not here! Daddy’s here! Daddy’s not here! Daddy’s here!”
“……”
Linne’s soul was leaving in real-time due to Siwoo’s passionate performance.
This wasn’t it.
What Linne had wanted was not this, at least not sucking on a pacifier and doing patty-cake.
But as Linne curled up on Siwoo’s lap, resigned to whatever was going to happen, she felt something, something calming.
“……”
If she turned a blind eye to the shame of being treated like a baby after living for hundreds of years, she could feel this subtle sense of stability.
Siwoo’s ultimate magic, born from experience, ‘playing with crying Malika,’ blurred Linne’s reason.
As she quietly complied and entrusted herself to the unfamiliar sense of stability, she felt sleepy.
The languid breaths brushing past her ears and the sound of her husband’s heartbeat, which sounded like a lullaby, led Linne to a nap.
“…koo….”
Linne, who rarely slept soundly due to her extremely sensitive senses, fell fast asleep.
On Siwoo’s lap, which was much more uncomfortable than a blanket.
Siwoo wiped away his cold sweat and carefully removed the pacifier from Linne’s mouth.
If anyone saw Linne sleeping defenselessly, it would surely leave a great scar.
Still, seeing Linne asleep with a relaxed face, he felt rewarded for having enthusiastically responded to her wish.
Siwoo gently stroked Linne’s ebony hair and chuckled softly.
“Whew, another one solved today.”
The process was a bit strange, but it was an ending that Linne was also satisfied with.
2.
Gehenna issued a statement.
To be precise, it was a statement from the ‘Academic Alliance’ within Gehenna.
If the message of the statement, which had removed the grand rhetoric, was summarized in three lines, it would be as follows.
1) We are ready for war.
2) We won’t stand by if you cross the line any further.
3) Be careful.
Not only did they issue a statement, but they also rebuilt the location points in response to the Hexennacht outposts expanding in three directions.
They dispatched a small number of personnel to prepare for the situation.
Although the Truth and True Name Academic Society did not agree with the statement, Hexennacht had completely stopped expanding for the time being.
Nominally, it was not because they were scared, but to consolidate the internal affairs of various puppet states, but the timing was too coincidental.
So, had the witch world entered a relatively peaceful period of civil war?
No.
Hexennacht is basically a group of public figures.
They were already itching for a fight, and they weren’t the kind of people who wouldn’t fight just because they were told ‘don’t fight’ from above.
They formed teams of three or five to search for spoils, hunt prey, and gain merit, and sometimes they attacked location points, and Hexennacht would condone and abet it.
Gehenna also does not seek to expand into an all-out war by using that level of conflict as an excuse.
That would be a burden in itself.
Therefore, war is actually happening in small scales everywhere at this very moment.
“Ha…. Manya, Malisha… was it good?”
However, Alice Ibn Hayyan, the mercury witch dispatched to the Alaska temporary branch, was leisurely making love with her two lovers, Manya and Malisha, in a hotel suite until the glaciers melted.
“Yes, it was good, sister….”
“Manya, aren’t you going to move your thigh off my stomach?”
“Malisha, you get lost!”
“Don’t fight, you bitches, and drink your coffee.”
The coffee time, enjoying the white night with the city scenery after a passionate lovemaking, and the relatively mild weather that reached 10 degrees during the day, were far from the tension of war.
Contrary to the common perception that Alaska is a land of extreme cold, Anchorage, where the temporary branch was established, was a relatively prosperous tourist and aviation city in Alaska, so there were no major inconveniences.
The trio had even waited for homunculi in the desert while facing sandstorms.
“This is the Eastern Front. All clear today.”
“All clear! Nothing special, sister.”
“It’s 1,000km away from here. They wouldn’t be crazy enough to attack Anchorage, that would be an all-out war, so they’re still testing the waters.”
The place where the Eastern Army of Hexennacht had established an outpost was Kotzebue on the Bering Sea coast, while Anchorage was at the opposite extreme.
Although they had volunteered to be the vanguard with some witches, the current situation was that they were continuing small-scale skirmishes to avoid provoking each other, so the risk in Anchorage was virtually non-existent.
In other words, they had quickly volunteered for a sweet position, making a show of it for the Alliance while enjoying the benefits.
“The Gehenna desk jockeys don’t know this.”
“As expected! Sister! You’re amazing!”
“Sister, we’re also Gehenna citizens now.”
“Who said we weren’t? Our roots are different, our roots.”
This life of enjoying various conveniences guaranteed by the US government without spending a penny and going out to eat Alaska’s famous lobster was entirely due to Alice’s wisdom.
In addition, whether it was war or cold war, Alice’s position within Gehenna would rise when it was over.
“Shall we go to a restaurant soon?”
“Okay!”
“I want to eat that again. Halibut? They say some fish grow up to 3M?”
“And champagne?”
“Of course!”
Manya, who was grinning and getting dressed in a dress, thinking of enjoying luxury and vanity again today, looked out the window and shouted.
“Sister! Sister! Sister!”
“Why?”
“It’s a sun dog! There are multiple suns in the sky! Or are they stars?”
A sun dog, also called a mock sun, is a very rare natural phenomenon that occurs when ice crystals fluttering at low altitudes act as prisms, making it appear as if there are multiple suns.
In other words, it was impossible for it to occur in the middle of the city in this weather.
“What sun dog? Stop talking nonsense and get dressed.”
“No! I’m serious, sister?”
Alice, who had been grumbling, stiffened as she checked outside the window.
The sparkling lights scattered in the sky.
And the white smoke that followed.
If you didn’t know any better, it might look pretty, but to Alice, who had no childish innocence left,
Those were missiles.
“What the fuck.”
Soon, an otherworldy barrier of a scale that covered the entire Anchorage was deployed.
It was an attack.
