City ​​of Witches 518

Chapter 518 – #109_Missing(5)

#518

1.
About a day after Siwoo disappeared, Amelia concluded that this situation was more serious than she had initially thought.

It was Shin Siwoo, of all people.
He wouldn’t just leave a note and wander around outside all day.
She had asked Sophia to spread ‘crows’ all over Gehenna and had visited his acquaintances one by one, asking about his whereabouts.
Sharon, Takasho, Kiberly Periwinkle, Count Yesod, and even the Geminai mansion twice.

But no one had seen Siwoo.

By the second day, with no results, Amelia felt a crushing fear.

She was convinced that something had happened to him.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have left without a word, would he?

Amelia didn’t just sit there and collapse.
This was about Siwoo, of all people.
She was determined to do everything she could right away.

“Please help me.”

She sought help from Siwoo’s acquaintances and searched every corner of Gehenna.
Sharon, thinking he might have impulsively gone to see Duke Tiferet, went to see the Suah branch manager in the mortal realm.

But even after two or three days, there was still no trace of Siwoo.

While aimlessly wandering around Gehenna in search of Siwoo, she received a message from Sophia.
It was a report that a suspicious person was loitering in the empty areas of Gehenna.

Amelia immediately rushed to the maple forest where Sophia had found the witch.

It was common for exiles or public enemies to sneak into Gehenna while hiding their identities, so it could just be an exiled person who had illegally entered.

But her intuition screamed.
There was definitely a connection between the missing Siwoo and the suspiciously discovered illegal entrant.

Perhaps it was just Amelia’s wishful thinking, creating a false perception, but she had to meet them to find out.

When Amelia confronted the witch Sophia had found, she immediately started a fight.
The opponent was a public enemy.
The thick scent of blood was so strong that she couldn’t even guess how many humans they had harmed.

The fight was short.
In the first place, Amelia’s particle magic was almost impossible to counter.

The rain, which fell without any particular characteristic, resonated with Amelia’s waves and became seeds of particles that bloomed into flowers.
The moment one was defenseless against the rain, the initiative of magic power, the most important thing in a magic battle, would be transferred to Amelia.

What was important here was that this rain had ‘no particular characteristic’.
Therefore, unless the opponent had prior knowledge or was unusually cautious, they could be easily dealt with.

As a result, the fight, which was hardly a fight, ended easily with Amelia’s victory.

Amelia restrained her and arrived at the Geminai mansion.
Albiereo, who had been in seclusion, even rushed out to greet Amelia because of the situation.

Albiereo looked at Amelia with a slightly bewildered expression.

“I caught a public enemy.”
“Huh…?”

Meanwhile, from Albiereo’s perspective.

Albiereo, having received an urgent report that Amelia had captured a ‘True Ancestor Witch’ who had illegally entered Gehenna, came out of his room where he had been ailing for days to greet the guest.

To be honest…
At this point, seeing Amelia was not easy on his mind.

When Amelia had come to him earlier with a serious expression, saying, ‘I think Siwoo has gone missing,’ he had to hide his guilt and send her away.

No matter how worried Amelia was about Siwoo’s disappearance, how could he tell her that he had run away with Deneb on a love trip?
It was an incident that could greatly tarnish the honor of the count’s family, beyond mere moral issues or saving face.

“You’ve done a great job.”

However, even if it was a nominal duty, the Geminai family was in charge of dealing with public enemies who invaded Gehenna.
That was what the underground prison was built for.

“I want to lock her up in prison and interrogate her.”

Albiereo blinked again and looked at the public enemy Amelia had dragged along.

Amelia was unharmed, while the opponent was in a terrible state.
There were no visible wounds, but the magic circuits inside their body were a mess.
In that state, it would be difficult for them to use proper magic for a while.

If they were a True Ancestor Witch, they should be at the 21st level, but to subdue them so easily…
It made him realize once again that Amelia was a witch of the same level as the great Duke Tiferet.

“I think it’s related to the missing Siwoo.”

Regardless of her combat power, Albiereo judged that Amelia’s words were a stretch.

Amelia probably mistook Siwoo as missing and searched every corner of Gehenna.
And this foolish public enemy probably wandered around Gehenna without any sense of alarm, got beaten up, and was dragged here.
Of course, he had no intention of showing it.

In any case, since the underground prison was a place where only the Count of Geminai could use magic, Albiereo’s help would be needed for a proper interrogation.

“Yes, I’ll open the prison for you. Of course, I can help with the interrogation too.”
“Thank you.”

Originally, Albiereo didn’t help just anyone at any time.

He was fundamentally a businessman to the bone, always considering what benefits he would get first.
But because he had an unspoken debt to Amelia, Albiereo readily agreed to cooperate.

2.
A common characteristic of vampires, as passed down through various cultures, is that they sleep.

Whether they are doused with holy water, fall into a long sleep after having a stake driven into their heart, or take a nap in a gloomy coffin.
Especially the last one is even considered a trademark of vampires.

However, Clef Asmode hated sleep.
To be more precise, it would be more accurate to say that she hated the nightmares that always followed when she fell asleep.

She could see the study room where she spent the most time during her apprenticeship as a witch, and her mother and teacher, Erzebet Asmode.

It was said that even the most vicious public enemies cherished their apprentice witches like they were their own children, but not all witch priests had such harmonious relationships.

‘Can’t you even do this right? You useless thing. How did someone like you become my apprentice witch?’

Her teacher’s sharp finger poked her on the top of her head.
One side of Clef’s cheek, which had been hit several times that morning, was swollen red, and pus flowed from her lips, which had repeatedly burst open without healing.

‘…I’m sorry, Mother.’

Erzebet roughly grabbed Clef’s cheek, who answered in a subdued voice.
Clef’s shoulders stiffened like stone.
Erzebet, with a satisfied look, met her eyes directly and sneered at the reflexive reaction caused by learned fear.

‘The prophecy agency is just a bunch of quacks, aren’t they? I feel like killing you and getting a new apprentice witch. Clef, do you think you’re worthy of the great Asmode name? Really? Seriously?’

Sharp words, more than simple violence, lacerated Clef.

The great Asmode.
It should be the Asmode who *was* great.

Originally, the Asmode family boasted a high status among witches.

Just looking at how the legends and myths of vampires were spread across the continent, one could guess how much influence the Asmodes had in the past.
There was even a time when they had nearly 1,000 humans as their night servants and enjoyed lavish blood banquets in their gloomy castle every day.

However, as Keter created the concept of ‘public enemies’ and prohibited indiscriminate human experimentation, the Asmode family began to fall behind.

The Asmode family’s self-nature magic required a large amount of blood.
It was only natural that they would fall behind since the research method of indiscriminately making war prisoners and commoners into servants and grinding them up was no longer possible.

As such, the Asmode family, which had become like a limping dog, was now filled with inferiority and hysteria instead of pride and dignity.
And Clef’s teacher, Erzebet, was a person who seemed to have boiled down that impure blood.

She, who had not been able to rise even one level in her 100-year life, filled her self-esteem by scarring her apprentice witch’s body.

As if that wasn’t enough, from the time Clef’s budding breasts finished growing and she became an adult, Erzebet began to cast strange glances at her.

One day.
Erzebet, who was whipping her back as usual, looked at Clef and took a heavy breath.
It was a breath that smelled of a very terrible stench.

‘Stop…! Teacher! Please don’t do this…!’

Clef, who had been dragged by her hair, was thrown onto the floor and struggled to escape.
But it was impossible for Clef, who was only an apprentice witch, to shake off Erzebet from the beginning.

‘Stay still! You’re my apprentice witch. You have to listen to your teacher.’

The good thing was that the bruises became a little less noticeable afterward.
The bad thing was that the empty spaces on her skin were replaced by sharp teeth marks.
In fact, she couldn’t even properly distinguish which was bad and which was good.

The next image was a bed in a dark basement.

‘Clef, come here. Crawl.’

On it was her naked teacher.
On the shelf next to her were tools neatly arranged, made to inflict extreme humiliation on women.
Erzebet, who was a severe sadist beyond a simple pervert, had no qualms about manipulating her apprentice witch as she pleased.

‘Don’t you like it?’

Clef’s trembling eyes scanned it, but she couldn’t refuse.
If she crawled between her teacher’s legs and satisfied her, the harsh abuse would at least lessen.

‘You’re a slut, you were acting like a noble lady at first. This is your true nature. You like it too, don’t you?’

Or she would become her toy and let out miserable moans.

That damned teacher was selfish until the end.

Erzebet, who had used Clef as a plaything for years and vented her desires, seemed to have gotten tired of even that, and disappeared after passing on the mark without giving her a chance to stab her heart with a knife.
Without even leaving a common last will.

Clef wandered.
Her teacher was gone, but Clef felt another mark she had left behind.

Left alone, Clef, ridiculously, felt confusion, even longing and love, for the void left by her cruel teacher.

The only human relationship that Clef, who had been used as a tool for sexual perversion, had learned was to completely break down her autonomy and hand over the choice to an oppressive ruler.

Like a freed slave wanting to become a slave again.
Clef felt not a sense of liberation but a fear of not knowing what to do with the freedom she was experiencing for the first time.

‘Hello? You’re my new business partner? What’s your name?’

Bianca Bellili, the witch of desire, was the lover who completely changed Clef’s life.