Chapter 722 – #155_Party(3)
#722
1.
The pitch-black corridor flashes pure white.
Rinne’s long shadow, stretched along the wall, flickers with it.
-Thump-thump!
A thunderclap echoes a half-beat later.
Rinne, with her sword tucked into her waist, looks up at the slanted window.
Hexennacht is a pocket dimension close to perfection.
However, it’s hard to call it flawless.
It repeats the early winter weather with its constant breath and endless night, and there’s hardly any change in the weather.
But occasionally, rain accompanied by thunder and lightning falls like this.
The structure of the vertical city and the giant cauldrons placed throughout the towns.
Thanks to that, cumulonimbus clouds form and pour down local showers like this.
The Arcana Town where Almak Club is located wasn’t as close to the sky as Hyangwollu, but the thunder, amplified by echoing through the giant hollow, deafened the ears.
“……”
It was like that on that day too.
The downpour, like a curtain, slanted with the wind, harshly scratching the ground.
So loud that even if you screamed your lungs out, you wouldn’t hear it.
It was a terribly rainy day.
Rinne turned her head to the left.
From the middle of the long Western-style corridor, a wooden floor with the sound of squelching mud appeared like a mirage.
There, Rinne was standing.
“To the left.”
A hand covering young Rinne’s eyes.
Rinne, dragging her rain-soaked, heavy clothes, followed where the owner of the hand led.
“Look carefully, don’t forget, and remember it.”
The image of young Rinne, flickering like a phantom, soon disappeared around the corner of the corridor.
But the master’s voice, as if whispering right next to her, licked her ears clearly.
“Life does not tolerate weakness.”
Rinne recited the words that she had already repeated thousands and tens of thousands of times, like a mantra.
“All tragedies are byproducts of weakness.”
Rinne, who was about to follow her younger self and her master as if possessed, shook her head roughly at the sound coming from her feet.
“……”
Looking down, she sees Lydia’s secretary wriggling like a bug, making a ‘gurgle’ sound.
She roughly grabs his ankle, throws him into the room where she just cut the lock, and closes it again.
Rinne certainly seeks strength and doesn’t care about the means or methods in the process.
But she wasn’t a mass-murdering demon who indiscriminately slaughters anyone.
The one that cut the secretary’s neck wasn’t Rinne’s greatsword, her formal attire.
What was actually swung was not a sword with a physical form, but a sword materialized from Rinne’s mind.
It was merely a mental sword.
But the human imagination is great.
The story of the sailor who froze to death in a cold storage with the power off is already famous as an anecdote of the nocebo effect, isn’t it?
If a little magic is added to that, it becomes possible to temporarily ‘kill’ consciousness.
Just like Randa, that nameless secretary will fall into a coma for at least a week due to the communication error between the ‘mind that perceived death’ and the ‘body that signals normalcy’.
Anyway, she ended up using enough magic to be detected, so the time limit became even tighter.
As she was drawing a map in her head and heading quickly to Lydia’s workshop where Siwoo was waiting,
She looked back again as if she had forgotten something.
“……”
She gained strength.
To resist a life that does not forgive weakness.
The fragile girl who vomited just by looking at corpses and shed tears at the roar of clashing weapons and shouts was dead.
Then.
If she had turned the corner following that phantom just now.
Would she have seen a different sight than in her memory?
The corridor, which was unnaturally connected to the past like a scene in a dream, was now boasting its smooth marble and had returned to its original state.
“……”
Rinne hated the rain.
Because it brings back memories of the past that can never be undone.
It was inevitable.
PTSD stemming from the intense shock imprinted in her childhood.
Rinne had never experienced happiness or peace to cover it up.
The wound remains in place forever, without scabbing or scarring.
Rinne, frowning as if displeased, shook her head vigorously.
There’s no time to be played by such thoughts.
Now is the time to save Shin Siwoo.
2.
“Take good care of the house, my dear husband. Let’s play more when I get back.”
Lydia waved her hand and said goodbye, then left Siwoo alone in the workshop.
After the encounter with the Aries witch, the ball ended smoothly without any special incidents.
There were occasional happenings where people would ask Lydia if the products Siwoo was selling were hers, but that was about it.
So, it wasn’t like there were no gains.
“So, you were alive after all…”
In a way, she was the reason Siwoo became a witch and the enemy of her master.
She had seen the Aquarius witch, Aea Sadalmelik, from afar.
At the time when she last raped her and stole her magic, Aea had become a simpleton who couldn’t even activate her autonomous defense properly.
But, from what she had been doing, her magic, which had become much more ferocious than when they first met, indicated that she had not only completely restored her stigma but had also reached a higher level.
She had even obtained some minor information that she was taking a particularly radical stance even among the hardliners of Hexennacht and was conducting independent activities without belonging to the Qliphoth.
Anyway, as she had more time to think alone, she had enough time to contemplate.
The topic of her contemplation was, ‘Is it okay to stay under Lydia like this?’
First of all, Lydia isn’t particularly hostile to Siwoo.
You could even say that she unintentionally helped her.
The plan that should have been completely twisted by killing Rosie was buffered to the point where it was only ‘half’ twisted, and assuming that all her words were true, she would be handed over to Duke Errelim in a few days just by staying still.
In this case, the parts that she was worried about had been pondered enough, so she moved on, and Siwoo’s focus was on something else.
It was this.
The words Lydia said after meeting Rinne when they had a brief relationship before attending the ball.
‘Rinne came looking for you. She was desperately looking for you.’
It was within the expected range that Rinne would look for Siwoo.
After all, her disciple who said she would visit Rosie’s mansion had suddenly disappeared.
Moreover, wasn’t Siwoo a male witch, a high-value collectible?
‘She’s quite something, making that Rinne fall head over heels for you. Haha, but calling you husband. I thought I was going to die laughing?’
But Lydia’s following words were beyond the expected range.
Made her fall head over heels?
Calling her husband?
The words that came from her mouth made her doubt whether the Rinne that Lydia met and the Rinne that Siwoo knew were the same person.
Lydia was talking as if the reason Rinne was looking for Siwoo was ‘to find her beloved lover’.
It was too much of a defenseless leak of information to simply be teasing or deceiving Siwoo, which made it even more suspicious.
“That’s not right. We were quite awkward after that day.”
She had played hard to shake off Rinne, and as a result, she had shown Rinne the joy of a woman, but she had been slapped on the cheek until her nose bled while in the mount position.
After that, they didn’t even talk to each other until the next day.
“Could it be…”
In this situation where she was tilting her head, something came to mind.
According to Rinne, she is a person who cannot feel happiness.
But for some reason, she felt pleasure to the point of crying during her relationship with Siwoo.
If what Dorothy said, ‘Why don’t you just conquer her with your dick instead of going around in circles?’ actually happened?
“Come on, it’s not like the world is some kind of training sim.”
She chuckled at the absurd imagination that was going off on a tangent.
No matter how frustrating the situation was because she couldn’t figure it out, there were limits to delusions.
If things in the world were that simple, she would have conquered Rinne, Lydia, and even the Aries witch she met today, and created another Gehenna.
At that moment when she was chuckling, Siwoo sensed a surge of magic that echoed throughout the workshop.
-Clang!
And a moment later.
A clear sound of cutting very hard steel with even harder steel rang in her ears.
“What is it?”
Her senses, honed in countless battlefields, told her that the person who had just entered was not ‘Lydia’.
It was also possible that one of the hardliners had noticed Siwoo’s existence and had come to kidnap her.
Siwoo reflexively got up and habitually tried to create armor.
But the performance of the collar that was put on to enslave the witch was perfect.
It was an artifact that Lydia herself had made.
The identity of the person who entered the bedroom faster than Siwoo, who was trying to jump behind the bed to assess the situation, was.
“Master?”
It was Rinne.
She was staring intently at Siwoo with eyes that reflected the black magic.
“How did you get here…”
Rinne, who had strode closer, stopped in front of Siwoo.
Her expressionless face, as stiff as a mask, was the same as usual, but for some reason, she was hesitant in front of her as if she was dealing with a very difficult person.
“I came to save you. We have to hurry, there’s no time.”
But soon, a bleak voice, no different from usual, struck her ears.
“How did this happen?”
“There’s no time to explain in detail. The Golden Witch will be back soon.”
In that short time, Siwoo tried to figure out how this had happened.
If she had come as a guest, she wouldn’t have drawn her sword and stormed into the workshop.
Moreover, just by looking at the nuance of what she was saying, it wasn’t hard to guess that this was an illegal intrusion to save Siwoo.
In other words, Rinne had made the choice to turn her back on Lydia, one of the powerful figures in Hexennacht.
The reason was, needless to say, to save Siwoo.
“Why go this far?”
Siwoo asked, unable to hide her bewilderment.
Rinne was originally someone whose inner thoughts were unknown, but this time, she really had no idea what was going on.
Rinne stiffened as if Siwoo’s question contained a very deadly paralyzing toxin.
Her shoulders, which were always relaxed as a skilled swordsman, were completely stiff.
“……”
Rinne mumbled, her lips twitching, then quickly averted her gaze.
Was it an illusion caused by the candlelight that her ears, which were slightly exposed through her silky hair, looked flushed?
“…Time is of the essence.”
It was another moment when her head became complicated.
It was certainly not good to leave her fate in Lydia’s hands, but she was worried whether it was right to follow Rinne, who had become the enemy of the public by causing this commotion.
She was worried that it might make things even more complicated.
“I know what you’re worried about. I also know that you killed Rosie.”
Rinne opened her mouth first, as if she knew Siwoo’s mind.
“But this time, trust me.”
Siwoo, who couldn’t use magic anyway, couldn’t refuse Rinne’s intention.
Rather than leaving her body to a fate that someone else had decided, she had no choice but to try to entrust herself to a new flow.
“…I understand.”
“Then, get on my back.”
Rinne, who had hoisted Siwoo on her back for a quick escape, ran through the corridors of Almak Club with the speed of the wind.
Mc in princess carry