City ​​of Witches 277

Chapter 277 – #61_The Priest(7)

#276

1.
The fight was over.
The gap between the two was so overwhelming that Paola couldn’t even put up a decent resistance and was defeated by Eloa.

Of course, this was only possible because Eloa had recovered some of her magic power.
If it had been Eloa right after fighting the knight, she would have been wrapped up in those disgusting tentacles and become a bite-sized snack.
Eloa stood before the lotus flower, shining with a brilliant light.

Then, something unexpected happened.
Paola, who had been lying as if leaning against the lotus flower, stopped Eloa with a desperate voice, accompanied by sticky blood clots.

“Wai…wait…!”

Surprisingly, Paola was still alive for a while even after being pierced through the heart.
Perhaps she had inherited some of that tenacious life force while assimilating her body with the homunculus.
But that was only a temporary reprieve from death.

“……”

Eloa raised her contract sword again.
This time, she intended to cut off her head for sure and relieve her pain.

“Stop… please, listen to me…!”

Paola looked up at Eloa urgently, revealing her teeth stained red with blood.
The wound in her chest was still gushing out thick blood.
If there were no appropriate measures, the fate that awaited the Cowardly Witch was clear.

Eloa stopped abruptly, still in the stance of swinging her sword.
Many enemies had begged Eloa for their lives.
There were also witches who, overwhelmed by fear, gave up everything before even engaging in battle and pleaded for mercy.

However, Eloa had never once stopped her sword or listened to their words.
Instead, she silently carried out the burden she had taken upon herself.
They had indiscriminately killed humans to satisfy their desires, killed apprentice witches, and killed fellow witches.
No matter how plausible their cause might be, it was wrong and a sin that deserved punishment.
There was no room for compromise, appeals, or sympathy.

No, this was just an excuse.
Eloa knew.
She just needed a place to run away.
She was just using the dark emotion of revenge as a driving force to support her shattered life’s purpose.

“……”

However, even Eloa, who had always cut off hesitation like a knife, was an exception when it came to the Cowardly Witch.
It was undeniable that Paola’s appearance overlapped with her own.

“You… you know too… what it’s like to lose… the sadness of it…! Losing an apprentice witch because of your own mistake, and having to accept the irreversible consequences… you know how painful that is… don’t you…!”

Paola was desperate.
Even though she couldn’t move properly, just opening her mouth was painful for her punctured lungs.
She squeezed out her voice and cried out to Eloa with all her heart.

“I’m… I’m the same as you… so you can understand me… can’t you… You, of all people, know how I felt when I did this…”

Also, the reason why Eloa couldn’t easily swing her sword was because she knew that Paola’s appeal was not just for her own life.
She was not trying to gain Eloa’s sympathy to extend her miserable life.

“I didn’t want to do this either… It wasn’t because of some magic… You can understand, right? I just… I just wanted to go back!”

Paola was also struggling to correct what was wrong.
Feeling guilty just for breathing, feeling self-reproach.
She was in a pitiful situation where she had no choice but to cling to anything to fix the past.

When she beheaded the enemies and the homunculus.
She had never thought that her actions were truly for justice.

It was just a coincidence that Lapi’s last words were ‘I want to save people,’ and since the target of her revenge was the enemies, she had been hunting them and the homunculus.
What if the Cowardly Witch had a different target to resent, and if there had been someone by her side who would listen to her more properly?

“I understand. Your pain, your grief, your sorrow, your sadness… I understand it more than anyone else.”

The Cowardly Witch, Paola Sochitl, was Eloa Tiferet’s distorted mirror.
If Lapi’s last words had not been there.
If Eloa had not overcome her sadness and guilt and had fallen, that might have been her own appearance.

Eloa knelt on one knee and met the Cowardly Witch’s gaze.
Her crimson eyes were filled with pity and compassion.

Was it there that she found a glimmer of hope?
The Cowardly Witch sobbed even more, speaking passionately.

“Here… the result is complete, if you have this lotus flower, you can save your apprentice witch too…! Just pretend you didn’t see it… If I save my apprentice witch, I’ll disappear too…! And then you can use this lotus flower to revive your apprentice witch as much as you want, isn’t that great? Isn’t that the best option for both you and me? Right?”

Eloa looked at the lotus flower again.

“Yes! With that, we can fix our regrets, right? We can be happy again! We don’t have to burn with revenge against the enemies or the Aquarius Witch… We can start over…! “

The lotus flower was blooming beautifully.
It was, without a doubt, more beautiful than any artifact Eloa had ever seen in her life.
It was hard to imagine that it was a flower that had bloomed on a pile of countless corpses.

Like a mother’s heart for her child.
Although the Cowardly Witch’s actions were extremely evil, her love for her apprentice witch was truly pure enough to bloom such a beautiful flower.

“Yes, it’s possible… We can go back to everything…”

Paola’s words were cunning.
She had conveniently left out the fact that countless people had to be sacrificed to achieve her goal and activate the lotus flower.
She thought that it was right to put Tiferet in conflict right now.

If it was someone who shared the same sadness and pain as herself.
This one word would feel more tempting than any other temptation.
And those words accurately penetrated Eloa’s heart.

She could revive Lapi.
Not meaningless revenge.
She could say the words she couldn’t convey, give the teachings she couldn’t give, and share the future that she could no longer have.
The most ideal future that Eloa could imagine was here, taking a clear shape.

Eloa closed her eyes.
Lapi’s voice, her cute nose, her round eyes, which she had never forgotten for a single day.
Eloa’s treasure that she wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.

If she took the Cowardly Witch’s hand, she could see it again.
Not in a dream, not even a stiff, bloodless corpse.
Now, here, in reality.

“How many people died to bloom this lotus flower?”

Eloa calmly and quietly cut off her lingering feelings.
When she opened her eyes again, everything about Lapi that had bloomed in her heart disappeared like a mirage.

“That’s not important… They’re just people you don’t even know… It’s not wrong to want to see the most precious person again…!”
“I have no right to blame you. I have no right to dismiss your sadness as a lingering attachment, nor do I have the right to deny you.”
“Okay! I’ll concede…! Let’s save your apprentice witch first…! Then I’ll do it…”

Even though she knew that the order didn’t matter.
Even though she knew that her proposal had already been rejected.
Paola denied reality, her neck veins bulging.

“……”

However, seeing Eloa, who didn’t answer, she realized as clearly as if the blade of a guillotine had fallen.

“How can you be so indifferent…! You said you understood… Do you think you’re any different from me?”

After the desperate pleas and appeals were cut off in vain, what replaced them was hatred and anger.
Paola’s condemnation, close to a scream, was directed at Eloa.

“I understand your anger and despair too. I was the same.”
“Shut up! You don’t know anything! I, I did this only for this… only for this…”

Eloa looked down at Paola, who was struggling, with pitiful eyes.

“I mourn, I regret, I despair, and I struggle with guilt every single day. I would have done anything to save Lapi too.”

If she hadn’t met Siwoo.
If she had been here, wandering after losing even the target of her revenge.
If she had heard the Cowardly Witch’s proposal with a heart that felt like it would shatter at any moment.
Could she have shaken her head so easily as she did now?

If she answered that she could deny it, it would be arrogance.
Eloa didn’t think of herself as such a strong person.
She would have definitely agonized, and perhaps she might have even helped Paola, who was on the verge of death.

“But even if I revive Lapi with your power, Lapi will surely be sad.”
“Ha! In the end, you’re making such a cowardly choice because you’re afraid of being resented?”
“Yes, I’m afraid.”

Eloa sighed deeply.

“When I revive that child. I can see her clearly, scolding me for what I did, asking why I revived her. But she will surely forgive me. She will cry, she will rage, she will hit me, she will yell at me, and she will resent me, but as time passes, she will eventually embrace her incompetent teacher.”
“……”
“After that, I will wander the world until the moment I close my eyes, atoning for the sins I have committed.”
“That’s… enough…”
“That’s not what Lapi wants. It’s just my selfishness. The path left for me, the path I have to walk, is to mourn the departed and move forward silently.”
“……”

Perhaps she had exhausted all her energy in her last desperate plea and anger, Paola’s voice was fading.
Her throat was clogged with boiling blood, which flowed endlessly from her lips.
The end was near.

Neither Eloa nor Paola spoke any more.
They had already exchanged enough words.

“Do you have any last words?”
“……”

Paola, who had lost even her last hope, looked up at Eloa with one eye that seemed dead.
From her empty heart, where nothing came to mind, a deep, dark malice and hatred blazed like fire.
It was hatred for the enemy who had taken away all her hope.

“I hate you.”

Eloa’s sword drew a beautiful spiral.
The blade, which drew a smooth line without even a sound of cutting, brushed past Paola’s neck, and then shattered the lotus flower she had been leaning on.
Eloa returned the sword, which was not stained with a single drop of blood, to the subspace, and then murmured in a bitter voice.

“Even that, I can understand.”

After confirming the lotus flower slowly crumbling like a cracked glasswork and Paola’s corpse covered beneath it.
Eloa moved her steps to where Siwoo was waiting.