Chapter 104 – #23_상실의 대가(3)
#102
1.
The twins were very depressed.
They had rushed to Amelia, startled by Siwoo’s strange condition.
Deep down, they had hoped that Amelia, a capable assistant professor, might be able to do something about it.
But she already knew everything and had given up.
To the sobbing twins, Amelia replied in a weak voice.
‘That’s the limit of what can be treated.’
She said he couldn’t recover any further.
The result of the treatment was Siwoo, a puppet who only looked at magic, with no emotions or anything else left.
The twins, who had been full of happiness when they arrived here, returned to the carriage, haggard and dejected.
As soon as they heard that Siwoo had woken up, they had rushed over, expecting to see him healthy, only to be met with this cruel truth.
“Ugh… ugh…. Sister….”
“Don’t cry, Odette.”
Odette collapsed onto the seat as soon as she got into the carriage.
Despite being told not to, pearly tears were streaming down her beautiful violet eyes.
Odile wasn’t much different.
She was standing with her fists clenched, but her whole face was flushed red.
“It’s, it’s my fault…. If I… If I had listened to the exile back then….”
“No! Why is this your fault!”
“But, but if I had quickly knelt down and begged them to save Assistant, maybe… maybe things would have been different!”
Odette began to blame herself.
Odile couldn’t escape the cycle of self-blame either.
After all, Siwoo had stood up to the exile to protect not only Odette but also Odile.
“What do we do… What do we do about our Assistant… Hwaaaang….!”
“Odette, get up.”
Even so, Odile stubbornly swallowed her tears and pulled Odette’s wrist.
Odette, who was staggering like a drunk, sobbed and hugged her sister.
“Let’s go back… Let’s go back and talk to Assistant… Okay? Or… let’s tell him what we prepared! Then, then… he might come to his senses… while liking it….”
Even with her carefully applied makeup ruined by tears, Odette hiccuped and cried.
“I told you to stop crying!”
“Why? Why can’t I cry… It’s just, it’s just so sad….”
Odile’s shoulders, who had been scolding Odette, also began to tremble slightly.
“If you cry… I want to cry too…”
Compared to her younger sister, Odile was more mature, but her heart was just as tender.
Eventually, Odile, who had started to cry uncontrollably, hugged Odette and wept loudly.
2.
Latifundium, which is responsible for most of the supply of Gehenna’s magic crops.
The Latifundium, which had been ruined by the Homunculus, had completed all restoration work in just one month as a result of a dozen witches working on it.
The magical power that was constantly supplied to restore the land’s power during the break period brightly illuminated the darkness born from the branches and leaves of the giant tree.
However, there was a pit where the roots of the tree and large rocks were intertwined, which even that light could not illuminate.
In a space subtly hidden by the bushes, where no one’s footsteps or gaze reached, a sign of life appeared.
A translucent membrane with prominent blood vessels and fascia on it.
Covered in mud from the leaked fluid, it resembled a sleeping bag made of giant intestines.
The translucent membrane, which was so thin that the inside could be seen vaguely, tore, and sticky amniotic fluid burst out from within.
A sticky, wet arm reached out from the torn membrane.
It was an arm as white and slender as a magnolia.
Like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, the arm struggled for a while before tearing the rest of the membrane with difficulty.
“Ugh, ugh…. Ugh…”
The woman, who had barely managed to get out, lay face down on the dirt floor and vomited a large amount of sticky liquid from her mouth.
It was the same liquid that had covered her entire body.
“Damn it…..”
Black, short hair that ended at her shoulders.
Red eyes that shone ominously between her eyelids, which were covered in mucus.
Long, slender limbs and a pure white naked body with feminine curves.
The witch of Aquarius, Aea Sadalmelik, shuddered at the terrible sensation of amniotic fluid clinging to her entire body.
“Damn it….!”
She glared around with her venomous eyes, and then, realizing that no one was there, she used magic.
Using the magic of cleanliness, even the last drop of amniotic fluid that had been dripping was cleanly removed from her body.
However, the foul smell that had been on her hair did not disappear immediately.
At the same time, a headache pierced her head.
It wasn’t an internal physical problem.
The fear of flowers blooming in her body and becoming nutrients, which felt as vivid as if it had happened yesterday, overwhelmed Aea as soon as she regained consciousness.
-Spit!
Blood burst from her tightly bitten lower lip.
The feeling of her body becoming fertilizer, the gaze of Baron Marigold looking down at Aea with arrogance, her pathetic begging for life at the last moment, and the overwhelming difference in status that showed no room for resistance.
While her body was regenerating, the past thoughts that had been clumped together drove Aea into a bitter swamp of humiliation.
“I’ll pay you back a thousand, ten thousand times someday… you bitch…. I’ll kill you…”
Aea pushed away the fear that was trying to surface like a trauma, recalling the hateful image of Amelia in her mind.
Still, she had survived.
As long as she was alive, the next opportunity would surely come.
Aea was clearly a witch who pursued immediate pleasure.
However, that didn’t mean she was reckless and stupid.
If she had been, she wouldn’t have been able to survive as a public figure until now.
After deciding to hunt witches in Gehenna, Aea had set up two safety devices.
A backdoor to escape in case of an emergency.
One was the artifact ‘Cocoon of Rebirth’ from which she had just escaped.
It was an item that allowed the owner to be reborn in a cradle just once in exchange for taking the hierarchy from the mark when they died.
To be precise, it was taking the magical structures built on the mark, not the hierarchy, but since the hierarchy would go down if they were taken away, there was no difference.
“How much is it?”
Aea stroked the mark on her lower abdomen, like she was fumbling for a receipt the day after she had blacked out from being drunk.
The space that had been densely filled was now empty.
With each empty space she counted, her anger and hatred grew.
The remaining strokes were 15.
Except for the minimum level to maintain autonomous defense, 6 hierarchies had completely evaporated.
-Thud!
Aea kicked the amniotic sac where she had been curled up for 100 days.
The amniotic sac, which was rolling around and spewing amniotic fluid, made a sound like a wet rag being thrown down.
“Damn it, damn it…! That sassy bitch…”
It was good that she had survived.
However, it was a huge price to pay for losing six hierarchies, not just one or two.
She had no idea how long it would take to restore them.
At this rate, she wouldn’t be able to dream of revenge or anything else.
Aea roughly wiped the blood that was dripping from her lips down to her chin with the back of her hand.
The drops of blood that had fallen on her white chest were very provocative.
Regardless, even in the midst of her seething hatred, she knew exactly what she had to do.
It was to check if the second backdoor she had prepared was still intact.
Ribbons fluttered from Aea’s back as she scanned the surrounding terrain with her eyes.
Fortunately, ‘Maiden’s Loom,’ Aea’s main weapon, was working properly.
The ‘Water Bottle’ also seemed to be untargeted as a result of the deal.
Aea used the ribbons to lift a large rock.
She was a hunter who had hunted many witches and Homunculi, and she had many different artifacts.
Among them was an artifact called ‘Barrier Separator,’ which could tear down the barrier of Gehenna and create an entrance.
“………”
In the gap where she had lifted the rock, there was a gap the size of a palm.
It was fixed in place, gaping open like an abdomen that had been cut open for surgery.
Around it was a small water bottle-shaped ‘Otherworld Barrier’ that Aea had installed.
It was Aea’s specialty to prevent internal anomalies from being revealed to the outside, just like she had used when attacking the Marigold mansion.
It was all a deception that she had entered Gehenna using a Homunculus, and that she had released the Homunculus she had used as a key without killing it.
If the fact that the exile was inside Gehenna was revealed, they would block the escape routes that the witches could use to escape.
After all, if the gaps in the barrier were blocked, Aea would be trapped like a rat in a cage.
“That’s good.”
Originally, hunters would leave without disturbing other small holes if they saw the biggest hole.
Aea was also a hunter, so she knew that fact well.
As expected, the small and precious escape route she had prepared separately remained undiscovered.
It was good news that she could get out of Gehenna.
Nevertheless, Aea’s expression did not improve.
15 hierarchies were not enough to live in the current world, where all sorts of Homunculi and dangerous witches roamed.
Moreover, Aea’s situation, who had only accumulated resentment, was worse than other witches.
If they realized that she had lost her power, all the witches who had been harmed by Aea would be desperate to catch her.
It wasn’t just Duke Tiferet who was still wandering the current world to catch her.
Even the miscellaneous things that she had ignored and neglected would turn into enormous risks.
But Aea did not despair.
She just had to take more wombs from witches.
She just had to hunt more Homunculi.
She could always pay back this humiliation someday.
For example, someday when Marigold took in an apprentice witch.
She could plant a vessel in the apprentice witch and aim for the time after Marigold’s power was limited.
-Wooo-oong
Aea reached out and activated the barrier separator.
At the same time as a small vibration, the separator inside the water bottle began to widen the dimension even further.
Since she had kept it at the minimum size, it would take about 30 minutes for it to reach a level that Aea could pass through.
Once she returned to the current world, she would have to do something about her clothes first.
Aea glanced at her naked body and clicked her tongue.
At that moment.
-Rustle
A sudden sign of life.
Aea was startled and turned around.
This was a particularly remote place in the Latifundium, which was deserted during the off-season.
It was the safest place among the candidate locations that Aea had scouted to install the barrier separator.
“Who is it!”
Without answering, a man broke a branch and appeared, breaking the tense silence.
A familiar-faced man wearing loose clothes like a patient’s gown.
There was no way she could forget that face.
It was the man whose eyes she had personally gouged out and whose brain she had thoroughly pierced.
She had clearly stirred it deeply, but he was alive.
Wasn’t this saying that she had lost so much, but Marigold had lost nothing?
Even amidst her jumbled thoughts, Aea did not let her guard down.
About 10 ribbons were sharpened behind her back.
This was the limit for Aea in her current state.
“Oh my, long time no see, did you get lost?”
She spoke calmly on the outside, but she was actually very confused.
It was hard to believe that he had come all the way to this secluded place alone.
Soon, Baron Marigold might appear, or another witch might appear, grinning and trying to kill Aea, who had become an easy prey.
“……….”
However, even after a minute had passed, there was no answer.
No one else appeared either.
“What is it?”
Soon, Aea realized that Siwoo’s condition was not normal.
Not only was he wearing an eye patch covering his left eye, which she had personally pierced, but he also didn’t seem alive, as if he had resurrected a corpse.
He wasn’t even looking directly at Aea, who was clearly an enemy.
Instead, he was staring intently at the gap in the space that the barrier separator had opened.
It was as if he wasn’t properly recognizing Aea’s existence itself.
She didn’t know what was going on or how it had happened.
However, Aea was trembling with joy.
If she tore that guy to pieces and scattered him here, wouldn’t she be able to get some revenge on Marigold right now?
“That’s good?”
Aea grinned.
Ribbons unfurled behind her back with a fluttering sound.
“I was about to die from being bored. This is perfect.”
Aea looked at Siwoo.
At that moment, Siwoo also looked at Aea.
As if he had finally recognized her existence, Siwoo’s lips twisted.
A violent expression that distorted his expressionless face.
Aea knew that the emotion that clearly surfaced was hatred.
“Bloom.”
