Chapter 276 – #61_Priest(6)
#274
1.
“Ahahahahaha!”
In the vast chamber that once served as a pump and engine room when the rainwater tunnel was still functional.
In the dark space where the ‘altar’ was originally placed.
Paola Sochtl, the Cowardly Witch, laughed. Then she cried.
A crazed laugh surfaced on her hideously distorted half-face, and crazed tears welled up.
All preparations were perfect.
No, they should have been perfect.
Taking advantage of the Red Knight’s weakened state from successive defeats, she obtained the Red Branch.
What Paola sought was the ‘distortion’ function of the Red Branch.
By extracting and borrowing the concept of distortion, she created an artifact that could twist not only causality but also the past.
To that end, she used the ‘Flute of Dagon’ to obtain human ‘connections,’ numerous corpses, and hearts.
She established an altar that continuously offered prayers, maintaining the nervous systems and brain functions of 1,440 people.
Many people died, but it didn’t matter.
Because she wanted to turn back time no matter the cost.
She wanted to wash away the days filled with regret and atone.
The result was here.
Paola laughed and cried madly, embracing a large flower that had swallowed the altar and bloomed.
Its shape resembled a graceful lotus flower blooming in a pond.
It was an artifact that exuded a sacred and mysterious aura, despite being born from countless sacrifices and devouring life.
“Ahahaha!”
She sent the homunculi she had been raising to kill or intimidate any witches who might interfere.
There was no need to worry about a power vacuum.
The Red Knight, wielding the fully bloomed Red Branch, and 1,200 White Knight replicas were ready.
As expected, the witches, preoccupied with their own safety, felt threatened by the troublesome situation and fled.
The fact that only three witches who had remained in Seoul entered this rainwater tunnel was proof of that.
In the course of these events, Paola had clearly crossed the line several times.
However, as the Whispering Witch had told her, Duke Keter did not move.
Everything was proceeding as planned, as if it were a lie.
Only one step remained to achieve the long-cherished wish she had been preparing for decades.
She would mobilize the Knights all at once to gather human lives.
She would offer life, connections, and magic power to this lotus flower to revive the apprentice witch.
She planned to properly imprint the mark on her revived apprentice and tell her.
That she was sorry.
That she had been so afraid.
That she hadn’t known that stopping the ritual could take the apprentice witch’s life.
That everything had been a mistake, and that she loved her so much.
She wanted to hug her and apologize.
In the witch society, a teacher’s sins are passed down to their disciples.
The descendants of exiled witches become exiles, and apprentice witches who inherit the mark of a public enemy become public enemies.
Occasionally, the Tree of Sephirot is discussed to break the chain of guilt, but for a public enemy who had caused an incident like Paola, it was nearly impossible.
But that wasn’t important to Paola.
Reviving her apprentice witch, whose voice and face had become blurry, and whose name she had even forgotten at some point.
That was all that was left for her.
If only she had had one more day, or even 12 more hours, everything would have become a reality.
She could have spent her last moments with her, having revived her from this lotus flower.
But that wish was shattered by a woman and a man.
Eloa Tiferet.
A 23rd-tier Duke renowned as a public enemy hunter.
Paola was aware of her existence.
But she thought she could overcome her, given her thorough preparations, and she was actually close to victory.
The White Knights, deployed in succession, steadily forced Tiferet to expend her energy.
After weakening her sufficiently, the Red Knight and White Knights, deployed all at once, achieved victory against the formidable Duke.
Just one more step.
If the Red Knight had taken her life, this battle would have been Paola’s victory.
Until that point, the Red Branch was intact.
The Red Knight had also suffered severe damage, but if she could retrieve the mark of the 23rd-tier witch, both the White Knights and the Red Knight could be rebuilt quickly.
Then, a man who joined the fight overturned everything.
He was by no means a powerful enemy.
He wasn’t threatening either.
He was a weak existence that Paola hadn’t even recognized as a separate force.
Yet, he had intruded into the most crucial battle and ended the Red Knight’s life.
It was truly absurd, and at that point, Paola’s defeat was confirmed.
“Ahahaha….”
Paola couldn’t help but find it ridiculous.
She had chased away and defeated formidable enemies, only to stumble over a pebble right before reaching her destination.
She felt neither hatred nor anger.
Only emptiness and futility echoed in her hollow heart, like a ghostly wail.
Now, she had to run.
Her reason told her so.
Judging by how she had entered the rainwater channel without hesitation, Della must have given her the location.
Soon, she would come here and punish Paola for committing such a great sin.
Paola was not the type to stand directly on the battlefield, and her opponent was Tiferet.
There was no chance of winning.
“……”
Paola looked at the lotus flower with an unknown gaze.
The culmination of her long-cherished wish, madness, obsession, regret, lingering attachment, atonement, sacrifice, resentment, and self-loathing.
The lotus flower, emitting a faint light and illuminating its surroundings, was blooming gracefully without any movement, even in this situation.
There was no way she could escape.
The altar could not move.
The lotus flower that the altar had bloomed was no different.
Originally, twisting irreversible causality, changing the past, was a feat that no witch had ever accomplished.
The fact that Paola, only a 19th-tier witch, was able to complete the ‘lotus flower’ with the function of resurrecting the dead was possible because, apart from her madness and obsession, she was also blessed with ‘luck.’
As a witch, she would probably never achieve such a feat again in her lifetime.
Abandoning this and fleeing was like giving up the final goal she had staked her life on.
Therefore, even as she heard the footsteps of the grim reaper coming to behead her, she couldn’t move at all.
-Thud thud thud
Indifferent footsteps.
Along with the quiet sound echoing inside the chamber, the Contract Witch, Eloa Tiferet, appeared.
2.
The magic power that Siwoo had given her was surprisingly pure.
So transparent that if you didn’t pay attention, you would forget it even existed.
It took less than a minute to internalize that pure magic power and store it in her mark.
The fact that he was a male witch was surprising, but the act of charging magic power through intercourse was so bizarre that it was a subject of research.
Anyway, thanks to Siwoo’s dedication, Eloa was able to obtain enough magic power.
She stood before the chamber, having postponed the payment of the contract price, strengthened her body with six contracts, and left four contracts immediately available.
This was the pump room that Della had told her about.
Even when examining the surrounding terrain, it was similar to the map that Branch Manager Sua had given her.
“Will you wait here for a moment?”
“Is it really okay if I don’t help with anything?”
Siwoo had already done his part.
The fact that there was no sign of danger on the way here meant that Paola was also out of strength.
It was more comfortable for Eloa to have him wait nearby, where he could help at any time, and to rampage as much as she wanted.
“Don’t you trust me?”
Eloa smiled and looked at Siwoo.
Siwoo, who had been staring at her face as if mesmerized for a moment, slowly nodded.
“Of course not, I’ll wait.”
Eloa ruffled Siwoo’s hair once and headed to the battlefield.
The iron door creaked open, and the Cowardly Witch, the beginning and end of this entire battle, greeted her.
This was the first time they had faced each other.
A public enemy who had caused a terrible disaster and was planning to cause more in the future.
Yet, the Cowardly Witch looked so exhausted.
Her distorted face and the beautiful face.
Both sides were so emaciated that it was visible to the eye.
The Cowardly Witch, who had been supporting herself as if embracing the large lotus flower, stepped down from the altar and faced Eloa.
“……”
“……”
The two stared at each other silently.
Without a word, unknown complex gazes intertwined in the air.
There was no need for conversation.
There was a mission to kill her here.
There was an obsession to survive here.
The two instinctively knew that a battle was inevitable.
“Bacchinaida.”
Paola moved first.
Her opponent was the Contract Witch.
She knew she couldn’t win, but she placed her last hope on the fact that Eloa wasn’t at her full strength.
She planned to do her best to defeat the Contract Witch here and find a way to move the lotus flower.
With no sacrifices left, the only thing Paola could offer to strengthen her homunculus was her own wretched body.
Murky magic power spread around her, and her legs began to rot.
At the same time, a subspace opened behind Paola.
Thick tentacles resembling octopus legs emerged and wrapped around Paola’s rotting legs.
Instead of suckers, there were thousands of small mouths.
The homunculus, which had devoured the insufficient food for its size, became one with Paola’s body in return.
To make up for the lack of power, Paola had thrown her own body as food to the last homunculus she controlled and merged with it.
“I contract.”
Along with Eloa’s incantation, a clear wave of magic power swept through the chamber.
Excluding the six contracts already used for body strengthening, there were a total of four contracts available.
Her body was still not in normal condition.
With the collection of the contract price forcibly postponed, she had enough magic power, but she couldn’t feel anything at the tips of her fingers or toes.
She was only forcibly patching up the gaps with magic power.
“I will cut you down.”
The moment Eloa’s lips moved, the seventh character shone.
The contract was concluded.
“I will cut you down.”
Eloa’s contract was not just a ‘word.’
Her contract was a self-suggestion and reality manipulation based on the power of words.
Once a contract was concluded, it had the characteristic of twisting even causality to achieve it.
“I will cut you down.”
For example, the moment she declared that she would ‘cut down’ a single target.
Eloa’s entire body functioned to carry it out.
Her eyes, heart, fragments of muscles and blood vessels, and even a single cell began to strengthen solely for the purpose of fulfilling the contract.
“I will cut you down.”
The final, tenth contract was completed.
This was why Eloa Tiferet exerted near-invincible power against a single opponent.
Her body was pressing down on the surrounding air with an unprecedentedly heavy magic power.
“Die!”
Tentacles extended from all directions.
An alien creature that could not exist under the laws of this world, fused with Paola, wielded tentacles of death.
However.
“……”
The flood of tentacles, easily numbering in the hundreds, couldn’t even bite off a single strand of Eloa’s hair.
Eloa’s sword, swung gracefully, was cutting down the tentacles fused with Paola as soon as they entered her range.
The gap between the two was so overwhelming that Paola could never have dared to oppose her in the first place.
Eloa’s body shot forward.
Ignoring the tentacles that belatedly chased her, she plunged her sword deep into Paola’s heart.
“Cough!”
Crimson blood gushed from Paola’s mouth.
The homunculus that had become one with Paola also flailed its tentacles in disarray, meeting its end.
Eloa pulled out her sword with an indifferent expression.
