Chapter 146 – #32_The Debt-Ridden Witch
#144
1.
“Hey! I don’t know where you crawled out from, but that’s mine!”
A sharp, irritable voice cut through the air behind Siwoo, who was puzzled by the dying homunculus he hadn’t even touched. Siwoo quickly turned around.
This place was still surrounded by the otherworld barrier. A woman’s voice from within could only belong to a witch.
Turning his head, he saw a woman whose attire did not betray his expectations. She was perched precariously on the fence installed to prevent suicides, with the dazzling night view as her backdrop.
Raindrops pattered on the pointed conical hat, a symbol of conquest for European witches. A green sapphire glowed with magical power at the end of her long wand, adorned with fresh flowers. She also wore a robe over a black petticoat that concealed her exposed inner thighs.
This was the typical attire of a traditional witch, often seen in Gehenna, but her shoes were a bit different. She wore riding boots that reached her calves, perhaps for mobility or as a touch of her own fashion sense. It was a bit odd, but it seemed to suit her well enough.
A witch on the rooftop of Shinchon Station. It was something he had seen without much thought in Gehenna, but now it felt like he was at a cosplay photoshoot. Though, Siwoo, clad head-to-toe in plate armor, wasn’t exactly one to talk…
“Whoops!”
The witch jumped off the fence, landing in a puddle with a slight frown. It seemed water had gotten into her boots.
“See that? The wound on its side. I made that, okay? Either fight me here or go your own way.”
The witch pointed her wand with a hostile voice and gestured with her chin. When the witch’s face, previously obscured by the backlight and hat’s shadow, became visible, Siwoo was startled. Her silhouette had seemed familiar.
Hair of two colors, a mix of deep green and turquoise. Just seeing that was enough to guess her identity. She was the pretty mixed-race part-timer who worked at the convenience store on the first floor of the officetel, who always gave him a perfunctory checkout.
The world was ridiculously small. Recalling how he had been defenseless in front of the witch while paying, he felt a shiver run down his spine.
But how was he supposed to predict this? What witch would work at a convenience store? If she had been the manager, it would have made a bit more sense.
“Hey, you not moving?”
The witch waved her wand like she was shooing away a bothersome bug at Siwoo, who was frozen in shock. Siwoo quickly stepped back, but he didn’t lower his longsword and shield.
This was the first time he had encountered a witch in the mortal realm. He had heard it countless times, but the fact that Siwoo was a ‘male’ who could use magic was an element that would attract more attention from other witches than necessary. They might attack at any moment under the guise of securing a valuable specimen.
“Please… something good, something good, something good, come out…”
But the witch, ignoring Siwoo, squatted down like a neighborhood thug, completely out of place with her fancy witch attire, and finished off the homunculus before rummaging through its corpse.
Huh?
Come to think of it, her reaction was pretty normal?
The twins and Sophia had all been quite surprised when they first saw Siwoo use magic. But this witch, whom he was meeting for the first time, seemed indifferent.
Could it be…
Siwoo unconsciously touched the helmet that covered his face up to his nose. True, his figure wouldn’t be visible under the plate armor, and he hadn’t spoken. His face was also half-covered.
In other words, the witch was mistaking Siwoo for another witch hunting homunculi. In fact, it was a perfectly reasonable conclusion. The probability of a man having reached a level of power to fight homunculi was much lower than the probability of a slightly taller fellow witch.
“Haa~ Another bust. What should I do…”
Watching the witch sigh like a horse racing fan who had just lost their last bet, he thought. If he quietly slipped away while still wearing this helmet, wouldn’t he be able to hide without any trouble? He didn’t want any unnecessary conflict.
“Hey.”
“…….”
The witch’s voice stopped Siwoo, who was slowly trying to sneak out of the rooftop. Honestly, he had been debating whether to run or not. Unlike his days as a slave, which were nothing more than a childish game, Siwoo had undergone a transformation and reached a level that was impossible to achieve in one generation. If he were a character from a boy’s manga, he might think, ‘Let’s see how much stronger I’ve become!’ but Siwoo was not like that. He was not at all pleased with this encounter with a witch that had come much sooner than expected.
He sighed quietly inside and, unable to answer, bowed his head and turned towards the witch. The witch splashed through the puddles as she approached Siwoo.
“Why are you so scared? Am I going to eat you? I’m not that kind of witch.”
Siwoo felt a strange mix of emotions as the witch casually patted his shoulder. He knew from Yebin that not all exiles were bad witches, but he wasn’t naive enough to trust someone just because of a single sentence. She was being friendly because she thought Siwoo was a witch, but if she found out he was a rare species, she might change her attitude at any moment.
“……..”
“Judging by your appearance, you don’t seem to be a witch from around here… You haven’t been exiled to the mortal realm for long, have you?”
“……..”
This was bad.
A long conversation was not a good sign.
When he had seen her at the convenience store, she had seemed so tired, radiating an aura of ‘I have no interest in any of you.’ Even though he was clearly showing his disinterest with his silence, this witch’s sociability was unstoppable. Or was it even right to call her approach sociability when she was so unguarded? Seeing her act like this in the mortal realm, not Gehenna, she must be quite confident in her abilities.
“You’re trying to catch homunculi and get a bounty from the Witch Point, right? Or not?”
“…….”
Witch Point? Bounty? This was the first time he had heard of it. The witch kept talking, pacing around in front of him. Even through the heavy rain, a fragrant scent reached him. It was exactly the same scent he had smelled when she was checking him out at the convenience store, making him realize once again that she was that part-timer.
“Sorry, but this area around Shinchon and Hongdae is my hunting ground. It’s not okay to just come in here. I’ll let it slide this time since you didn’t seem to know, but if you try to steal my prey again, I’ll respond with force.”
“………”
He nodded for now.
The decision was slow, but the regret was quick.
He should have just run away without looking back.
“I know. I was lost when I first came out too. No identity, no money, no information. It’s a terrible place compared to Gehenna.”
“……..”
“So, how about I tell you about a good way to make money? You’ll need money to settle down here anyway.”
And then she started talking about money right away.
He realized even more that she was the kind of person he shouldn’t associate with.
“Have you ever heard of blockchain technology…?”
The witch’s voice trailed off strangely as she was talking.
A pair of trembling mint-colored eyes appeared in front of Siwoo’s eyes, which were half-hidden by his helmet. Even in this tense moment, he was a little fascinated because he had never seen eyes of that color before.
“You’re the guy with the eye patch who comes to buy cigarettes every day? But this is magic… or is it not? Wait, what? You’re a guy, right?”
The witch stepped back in confusion, and so did Siwoo.
His priorities were securing safety through conversation, escape, and then combat. Siwoo deactivated his shadow gauntlets and immediately held up the ring of the Geminai family. It was the ring that Albireo had given him, guaranteeing that he was a guest of the Geminai Count’s family.
“You see this? I’m from the Geminai family…”
“W-wait a minute!”
And it worked.
As soon as the witch saw the ring on Siwoo’s index finger, her face turned pale.
“I-I’ll get the money soon. I wasn’t trying to cheat you… If you could just postpone this quarter’s payment for a week… no, two weeks…”
Her confident demeanor from before was gone, and she was now flustered and stammering.
What was going on?
Siwoo stared at the newly met witch with a bewildered expression.
Somehow, the witch, who had looked quite romantic in the rain just moments ago, now looked rather pathetic.
2.
“So, you weren’t here to collect money. I thought you were a servant sent by Count Geminai to collect debts.”
“That’s not it.”
“Sigh… This is really my life…”
The witch he had met by chance introduced herself as Sharon Evergreen. She had changed out of her damp witch attire into casual clothes, jeans and a t-shirt, and they were chatting at a bus stop where the last bus had already left.
To cut to the chase, she was not a ‘dangerous type of exile.’
Moreover, she was a witch Siwoo had heard about before.
The major incident that turned the Cloud Mushroom Village in Border Town into an oak forest, ‘The Sprout Rebellion.’ A witch had gone berserk during an experiment, causing the acorns that were scattered everywhere to grow explosively, resulting in the destruction of nearby workshops and houses.
When he had first heard about it, he had thought, ‘There are such scatterbrained witches too…’
He never imagined he would meet the very person who caused the accident in the mortal realm.
“So, you’re paying off your debt to get your citizenship back?”
This was the final reason why Siwoo judged Sharon to be a relatively safe witch.
The meaning of citizenship to a witch in Gehenna was like the nationality of their homeland.
The reason why those curious witches carefully researched magic while staying on the edge of the line was to avoid being exiled. Conversely, if she was struggling to regain her citizenship, he judged that she wouldn’t cross the line. Especially if Siwoo’s identity was guaranteed by the Geminai Count’s family, who had a strong influence even in the Tree of Sephiroth.
“That’s right…”
Also, the fact that her reason for exile was not reckless magic research or killing civilians also played a part.
“How much is your debt?”
“….About 58 billion 88.42 million won in Korean currency?”
It was a truly astronomical amount of debt.
“No way, you just destroyed some houses and it came out to that much?”
If it had been Taro Town, he would have thought it was possible, but Border Town wasn’t known for its high real estate prices. Even if she had destroyed a whole block of the village, would she really have such a huge debt? Was she being scammed?
“The witches whose research materials were destroyed when the workshops were blown up filed a class action lawsuit… Let’s stop talking about the debt, I feel like my stomach is twisting.”
Sharon’s shoulders slumped like trampled snow.
The downpour that had covered the city like a curtain had passed.
The night sky was now clear and shining brightly.
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I’m finally uploading the fan art that I haven’t been able to check due to being busy lately ㅜㅜ
Here is the Eia Sadalmelik drawn by Mental Breakdown Artist!
The full-body shot is too large, so I’ll upload it to the fan art gallery!!!
Here is Amelia knocking on the door, drawn by Rabbit Mannak!
It looks so cute ㅎㅎ
Pls link to fanart