City ​​of Witches 85

Chapter 85 – #19_Uninvited Guest(6)

#83

1.
From the moment Aea’s fingertips moved, Siwoo was ready for her attack.
He deployed the shadows that flowed from his armor in front of him.
The armor was his last resort for absorbing the impact.
He needed another way to actively counter her attack.
A shield to deflect the attack.

He didn’t even need to hold the shield directly.
He could just float it in the air and use it as cover.

The shield of shadows, made in a radial pattern to disperse the impact, was shaped like a flattened cone.
Siwoo planned to let the ribbon’s attack slide along the slope.
He lowered his body and opened his mouth.

And then.
The expected impact came.

-BANG!!!!

“Cough!”

An enormous shockwave.
The clash of magical power created when the shield and the ribbon collided was fed directly back into Siwoo’s body.
Along with the intense pain that made his insides shrink, the stomach acid in his belly surged up his throat.
Even though he had clearly blocked it, it felt like he had been caught in a bomb blast.

“Assistant!”
“…No!”

He stopped the twins, who were rushing towards him, with his hand, sensing his unusual aura.
The twins were safe now because this unfair fight was between Siwoo and Aea.
Even this was a brief safety that could be twisted the moment she changed her mind.
Now was the time to appease her and find another way.

“You can block that much?”

Aea’s nonchalant voice pierced his ringing ears.

It was as he had calculated.
The slope Siwoo had created had sufficiently deflected the impact, and the remaining impact was dispersed as the shield of shadows split like a pizza.

But what Siwoo hadn’t anticipated was that Aea was a much more cruel and ruthless woman than he had expected.
If Siwoo hadn’t been able to use the laws of shadows so freely, a part of his limbs would have been torn off his body and rolling on the floor by now.

Aea had clearly gone easy on Siwoo.
But the extent of her leniency was just enough to preserve his life.
She had no interest in how his body was damaged beyond that.

“Then, one more shot.”

-Screeeeeeeech

This time, the ribbon twisted in the air.
A taut sound, like a bowstring being pulled to its limit, vibrated the air.

Not one.
Two.
Three.
A total of three ribbons were aimed at Siwoo and the twins.

“You crazy bitch.”

Siwoo gritted his teeth and drank the second concentrated magic potion.

“Bloom!”

The shadows that erupted from his palm painted the air like an octopus’s ink.
This time, the shape was different from before.
Instead of a radial pattern, it was a honeycomb-shaped shield that was more dense and tightly constructed.
Moreover, he arranged three layers in sequence to be fully prepared.

Judging from the amount of impact from before, anything more than this was unnecessary.
This was the absolute limit to avoid leaving irreparable wounds while saving extra magic and mental power.

“You can’t die?”

The calculations were complete.
What remained was a gamble.
He tapped his knee with his fingers, gauging the timing.
The shield didn’t always need to maintain a constant hardness.
That would require too much magic.

If he concentrated his power at the moment of impact, that brief instant, he could defend against the attack with much higher magic efficiency.
However, if the timing was even slightly off, the shield would be torn like a piece of paper.
And after that, the blood and flesh of the inept owner would dance in the air.

-BANG!!!!!

A deafening sound like hammering on a steel plate.
The ribbons, which relentlessly struck the shield in succession, almost without a second’s delay, ultimately failed to reach Siwoo’s heart.
A shockwave twice as strong as before battered his entire body.
It was a pain like being hit all over with a baseball bat.

Nevertheless, Siwoo’s gamble was successful.
A blow that had grazed his cheek with a truly precarious force lost its menacing aura and returned to being a fluttering ribbon.

“Cough…!”
“You blocked that too? But it’s a shame you seem to be struggling after only two tries?”

The garden, which had been devastated as if a bombing had passed by, even though he had only been caught in the shockwave.
When the dust that had been clouding his vision was blown away by the wind, Siwoo was revealed, kneeling on one knee.

Siwoo calmly assessed his situation.
Lukewarm blood flowed from his left ear.
The sound on that side was blocked as if his eardrum had burst.
One of his eyelids, which had been grazed by a ribbon that had been torn apart along with the shield, was burning.
A handful of blood, from who knows where, was flowing from his mouth, and his once clear vision was blurry as if he were looking through stacked lenses.

Just one more time, let’s endure just one more time.
With a desperate resolve, Siwoo grabbed his thigh and stood up.

“Honestly, I’m surprised. How can a slave like you use such magic? Well, the efficiency seems really bad though.”
“Hoo….”

Siwoo ignored Aea’s words.
He didn’t have time to pay attention to her right now.
He had to calculate the magic and mental power to allocate to the next attack.

“Now, this time it’s thirteen. A very tragic and unlucky number.”

As Aea raised her fingertips, a total of 13 ribbons coiled in the air, staring at Siwoo.
One, three, and now thirteen?
He hadn’t even landed a single hit, and he was furious at the bitch who was switching phases as if his health bar had been cut in half.

Before Siwoo could desperately think about the structure of the next shield, Aea smiled and made a suggestion.

“Here’s a chance.”

Aea spread her arms wide like a theater actor and gave a bright smile.
Her eyes gleamed with a disturbing light of pleasure, as if she couldn’t bear how much she was enjoying this game.

“You know, right? That in the next turn, one of your limbs will definitely be cut off?”
“…I know.”

He wanted to deny it, but it was true.
He had no energy left.
To perfectly block that attack, he had to give up ‘one of the two’ for sure.

“Look at those twins over there, stupidly sucking their fingers and trembling. Isn’t it annoying? Someone is fighting with all their might.”
“It can’t be helped, you wouldn’t stay still.”
“Let’s just look at the results.”

They were going to give him time when he was already short on it, so there was no need to refuse.
She was just going to spout crazy nonsense like a psychopath anyway, so he just needed to agree with her appropriately.

“Among those twins, there’s the younger sister, right? While her older sister was saying she would sacrifice herself and fight instead, she didn’t say a word and was just sobbing.”
“Sniff…..”

Odette flinched as soon as Aea’s gaze reached her.
Even though Odile hugged her, wrapping her arms around her shoulders, her trembling didn’t subside.

“Hey, what’s your name?”
“You don’t have to answer!”
“You’d better answer?”

Aea blew on her fingertips as she spoke.
Odette cautiously opened her mouth.
Her voice, trembling like an aspen, was half-soaked in tears.

“O…Odette…”
“Don’t you have anything to say? Your sister is bravely saying she’ll sacrifice herself, and this poor slave is putting on a show to save you. But what are you doing?”

As Aea’s relentless criticism poured out, Odette averted her gaze.
As a weak-hearted person, it was too much for her to even bear Aea’s cold gaze.
What made Odette the most miserable was that her words were not unfounded.

Her mind went blank, and she had no intention of stepping forward to do anything.
Just the fact that her attention was on her was scary, frightening, and she just wanted to run away, trembling.

“Odette, don’t listen. She’s just trying to play with us anyway.”
“Is that how you should accept someone’s kindness? I’m just trying to teach Miss Odette, who doesn’t even have basic common sense, the proper way to behave.”
“Sister… I’m okay…”

Odette barely made eye contact with Aea.
The cat-like eyes, filled with madness, scanned Odette’s body up and down.

“Kneel down and beg for your life. Then I’ll make this stage a little easier.”

Although Odette was still an immature witch and a coward, she was not without shame.
She had pride as the heir to the Geminai family.
She knew how ugly it was to kneel and beg for her life in the face of trickery.

“You’re not going to do this either?”

But there was no choice.
After rationalizing, compromising with herself, and finally running away.
Odette’s legs slowly bent.
Just before her knees touched the floor.

“Auntie, please stop.”

Siwoo’s sarcasm froze the air.
Aea’s gaze, which had been watching Odette with an interesting look, shifted to the tattered Siwoo.

“Auntie?”
“I can’t stand to watch it. Do you want to act like that after eating your age?”

Aea chuckled.
It was a knowing laugh.

“I understand your intention, but was that the right choice?”
“I don’t know about that either.”

Shadows surged from Siwoo’s arms.
While Aea was briefly focused on Odette, he drank a high-grade magic potion that had been certified by the Emerald Tablet.
Thanks to Aea’s leniency, all the calculations were complete.

A huge amount of magic flowed from Siwoo’s body.
Absorbing and using completely different magic.
That was Siwoo’s specialty, which had been verified at Latifundium.
All that remained was to use the absorbed magic to utilize Siwoo’s own magnetic magic, which he had been researching.

“Miss Odette.”
“Y-Yes… Assistant…”

Odette, who had finally burst into tears, answered Siwoo with a sob.

“Later, when you inherit the name of Geminai, please punish this bitch.”
“Sniff… sob….”
“Miss Odette, you’ve shown enough courage.”

One of Siwoo’s hands drew a semicircle.
Aea tilted her head at the movement, which resembled Tai Chi, and looked at Siwoo with an interesting expression.

“What are you doing?”

Silver circles began to appear around Odile and Odette.
Siwoo’s eyes blazed with reflected light as if they were on fire.

The magic to open a ‘door’ was an incomplete version.
The magic formula that Siwoo had perfectly constructed was, at best, a circuit that absorbed and amplified magic.
The completion rate of the part for creating a hole between the other world and the present world was less than 10%.

However.
Siwoo had completed the remaining part while defending against Aea’s attacks.
It was impossible to create a formula that could perfectly cross dimensions in that short moment, but he could do something like randomly changing coordinates and teleporting within the ‘same world’.

Siwoo had reorganized this magic formula for emergency escape while blocking Aea’s attacks.
It was the ‘coordinate transfer formula’.
It was a magic formula that he had hastily completed by taking a part of the magic he had been researching.

“Kuh…!”

His head was hot from the overload.
The waves of magic, which were wildly surging through his body, tearing through his body, were damaging him.

-Thud thud

His nose was bleeding.
His eyeballs, which had become hot as if pressure had been applied, were overflowing with bloody tears from the burst capillaries.

“Assistant…?”
“Stay still!”
“What is this… Could it be…?”

The formula was nearing completion.
In his ear, which could only hear from one side, he heard a hallucination like a machine turning.

“You’re escaping! Go… and bring anyone! Amelia or the Count…! I’ll hold this crazy bitch here in the meantime!”

Not everyone could escape.
The magic consumed and the complexity of the calculations were proportional to the mass of the object being moved.
Moreover, he needed someone to block the attacks during the delay while the magic circle was activated.

-Wiiiiiiiiing!

“N-No! Assistant!”
“It’s meaningless. No one can escape from inside this bottle…”

The reason Aea hadn’t responded to the twins trying to escape was because she trusted the bottle.
Because no one could escape from inside her bottle, which perfectly separated the outside from the inside.

-Gurgle…!

And Aea’s blind faith crumbled in an instant.
The entire bottle barrier shook violently.
A small gap had appeared in a part that she hadn’t paid attention to.
A small gap that was just enough for one person to barely squeeze through.

“That’s impossible!”

There was no way such an anomaly could have suddenly occurred.
Aea looked at the ceiling of the bottle in horror.

The shadows that Siwoo had squeezed out to block the ribbons.
The shadows, which had been thought to have been dispersed by the impact of the ribbons, were now clinging to the top of the bottle.

In the short moment when Siwoo activated the teleportation magic, they had all clung to the bottle at once, creating a very small crack.

“Assistant…!”

The twins’ desperate cries disappeared.
They had successfully teleported.
At the same time, the gap in the bottle that had been barely torn open was repaired.

He had minimized Aea’s attacks and induced her carelessness.
He had gradually siphoned off shadows to prepare for creating a crack in the bottle.
At the same time, he had reorganized the magnetic magic he had been researching to teleport the twins, and he had calculated and applied variables to match the twins’ conditions.

Siwoo knelt down and collapsed.
He really had no energy left now.

Just as his upper body was about to fall over.
Siwoo squeezed out all his remaining strength, grabbed his trembling legs, and stood up.

He still didn’t know where the twins had landed.
It was inside Gehenna, but he had applied random variables.
They might even be nearby.

He had to buy enough time for the twins to activate the music box, so that Aea couldn’t immediately chase after them.

“How was it? Not bad for a slave, right?”
“………”

It was exhilarating.
His body was a wreck, but seeing Aea’s dumbfounded expression with her mouth open made him feel refreshed.
Aea’s twisted lips parted.

“You insolent thing. I was going to treat you nicely because you were handsome… I’ll tear you to pieces and feed you to the twins.”

Siwoo straightened his swaying upper body and drank one more magic potion.
In the midst of all the magic being sucked out to activate the magic circle and becoming desolate.
The waves of magic that were rippling through his entire body’s circuits were filling it again.

“Hoo.”

He swept his sweat-soaked hair back.
He gave a cocky smile and raised his middle finger.

“Your mom.”

He had no regrets now.