Chapter 1056 – #251_After Death(2) – DeepL
#1050
1.
It’s been two weeks since then.
A club blasting thumping EDM.
The sprinklers are pounding down like rain and the bubbling foam is impressive.
The young men and women in half-naked swimsuits groping each other are also a sight to behold.
In the VVIP room overlooking the stage and the drug- and alcohol-fueled rampage, Lydia sipped her drink contentedly.
Lydia Magnus, Witch of the Gold Coin, was feeling pretty good.
The plan had worked.
With Psyche out of the picture and once again at the helm of Solidus, Lydia had undertaken a project to solidify her support.
It was to deal with the traitorous Sword Witch of Hexenacht, the Witch of Composition.
It was nominally an emotional proclamation that I would not tolerate traitors, but it was the product of thoroughly calculated reason.
A head-on conflict with Gehenna is a bit much.
The same goes for the Gehenna-affiliated location points.
A small town in the middle of nowhere, with a close friend of the Duke of Tifferet sitting at the head of the branch, was better off with minimal casualties.
Lydia wanted just the right amount of tension and conflict.
A raid on a Gehenna witch, or a Witchpoint witch, would certainly raise eyebrows.
But what if it was a feat?
Even if they were converted, those pompous Gehenna sandbags wouldn’t care about the lives of their prisoners.
Otherwise, their merits would have been recognized long before they entered Gehenna.
That’s what Linnaeus and Dorothy had set out to do.
It would have been nice to extract their marks, but lives are precious on this mission.
I managed to mortally wound Linnaeus and kill Dorothy.
That was enough of an accomplishment.
The Hexenacht, shaken by a series of setbacks, had been united by a single victory, which naturally led to Lydia Magnus’s high praise.
“At least she’s got a good face.”
Lydia thought back to the time she’d spent with Dorothy in this room when she’d been held hostage.
She was quite the conversationalist.
She was knowledgeable about the dirty business, and best of all, she didn’t seem intimidated.
Maybe we could have been good friends.
Now I’d never see her again.
“To Dorothy.”
As she toasted to herself, Lydia checked her vibrating cell phone.
The caller ID doesn’t show if it’s from a satellite phone, but it’s obvious who’s calling.
I can hear the nervousness in the vibration.
“He’s in a terrible hurry.”
For this project, Lydia has gone the extra mile.
Rather than maneuvering the forces of Hexenacht’s Solidus Top or the god Clippot directly, she hired outside mercenaries.
The Lehar Group, a war mercenary organization comprised of former Clippotts and other public figures.
Even if they are living today, they do not directly intervene in every conflict.
The higher the stakes and the more violent the conflict, the less they want to get involved.
In such cases, the Lehar Group is an excellent proxy warrior.
They’re willing to take on the most dangerous jobs if you pay them well.
The timing was particularly good.
After the floods, homunculus seeds around the world dried up.
The Rehar Group’s money stream, which had usually been commissioned by third world countries to exterminate homunculi, dried up as well.
Lydia had used her vast financial resources to lure them into a politically risky operation that even the Rehar Group would not be willing to undertake.
“Yes, this is Lydia Magnus, the Witch of Trust.”
[Ms. Magnus, your success fee is coming in way too late, and I don’t suppose you’re in the mood to argue now?]
There’s an undeniable belligerence in her voice that is uncharacteristic of a witch.
This is Herya Valhirie, the War Witch.
“Calm down, Herja,” he says, “Solidus will make sure the contract is honored….”
[If you show the slightest sign of fooling around, I’ll sink your merchant ship as soon as I see it. Shut your mouth and give me the mining rights now.]
“Tsk.”
[You Calvary bitch, you think I don’t know what you’re up to? I’m willing to take a bullet for you, and you’re late with the deposit?]
It’s true.
If Gehenna were to make a formal issue of this, the Lehar Group would be the primary culprit.
They were the subcontractor for that.
“The local government in South Sudan is barking up the wrong tree, and I don’t know what to do. We’re just delayed, but we’re on track. Just wait, puppy.”
[Do you want me to go wipe your mouth now that you’ve done your business, or do you want me to go kill them all, half of them for every day that passes?]
“That’s up to you. Just wait a week….”
With a loud expletive, Herya ended the call with a flourish.
Lydia sighed, then suddenly remembered something.
It was a memory she’d forgotten.
A phone call from Xinxiu while Lydia was negotiating with Dorothy as a hostage.
He’d made an unreasonable demand of Lydia.
“If this is a trap, and something happens to my lover because of it. I will come for you.
‘No matter what ridiculous dangers and crises you encounter, you will survive. I will return as your most feared enemy by any means necessary. I will make sure of it. So….
‘Behave yourself.
Lydia suddenly remembered the ridiculous threat, probably because Dorothy, the hostage, was dead.
Lydia smiled as she had then.
2.
As is often the case with public groups, the Lehar Group is hardly a tightly knit organization.
It wouldn’t make sense to have a stable system of self-serving, self-serving, greed-fueled exploits.
Therefore, the Lehar Group is a point organization with multiple teams.
Normally, they do their own thing, but when a job comes along, they assemble a task force to fulfill it, and when the job is done, they disperse.
The three witches who rented an upscale bar in Medellín, Colombia, were also part of Nili’s group.
Normally, they would have spent a day or two cleaning up after the mission, but the afterglow of victory was especially sweet.
We were paid this much for raiding a single branch, and we didn’t get any beans.
As a result, we’ve been partying and drinking for two weeks now.
“Boss, can I order something so expensive?”
“Drink more. You just made a lot of money, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I know. Let’s order more drugs. Something stronger.”
The leader of the team, Nilee, is a 20th ranked warlock.
The other two are 19th and 18th ranked and have proven their skills.
“If only this happened every time.”
“Who says it doesn’t?”
The Witch of Composition and the Witch of the Sword.
Neither of them was a force to be reckoned with, but the nature of this mission was raw.
The entire elite force of the Lehar Group had been brought in to hunt down just the two of them.
The task was too easy, and the reward too great.
“From what I hear, this was a big assignment for the High Lord of Solidus.”
“Lydia, I’m sure he’s a rich man. Shall we make a toast?”
“A rich man!”
Nilee raised her glass in a noncommittal toast.
“Cheers….”
The teammate sitting across from him was about to raise his glass.
-Sshhh!
A reddish afterimage flashed by faster than sound.
Tanya, the teammate caught in the blast, is seen flying sideways as if caught in a siege crossbow, as if in slow motion.
-Cuagua mania!
Wall decorations are scattered, tables and chairs overturned.
I turn my gaze to the side and see Tanya dying, a red spear piercing her heart.
“Sa, sa… sal….”
Like a dying insect, her self-defense seemed to try to trigger again and again, but it was probably hopeless.
-Boom!
At the same time, the red spear tip spread out.
It’s a textbook ambush.
There’s no point in attacking with a backstabber from the start, so it’s better to attack with a backstabber at the same time as the initial attack.
Despite the suddenness of the attack, neither Nilee nor Mary, the only surviving member of the team, reacted with what can only be described as reflexes.
There’s no panic, no freaking out.
These are not witches, but warriors who have seen life and death battles.
Immediately, she summoned her magic and turned her gaze to the direction the spear had come from.
“Boom!”
Taking advantage of the distraction, ribbons wrapped around Mary’s neck and arms.
The source of the ribbons was the red spear and the shadow cast by Tanya’s corpse.
Taking advantage of the moment, the ribbons wrapped around her body like a carnivorous plant, tightly encircling her entire body.
“Bo, boss… Ugh!”
Mary tries to shake it off, but the strange force field endlessly emanating from the ribbon robs her of any resistance.
Eventually, the bones in her body are crushed, and she is dragged to the ground like a tentacle monster, her neck snapped in vain before she can even exhale her terminal.
Squinting, Nili looked to the corner of the darkened tavern, to where the first javelin had come from.
“What kind of bitch is that?”
Despite his cold, calculating demeanor, his mind was quite complex.
I’d lost two men in an instant.
I don’t mind that much, actually.
They were good guys to use anyway.
But who? Why? How?
No matter how you slice it, there are no clear answers.
-Chul Kuk Chul Kuk
The assailant appeared on his feet.
It reminded Nili of a homunculus.
Red armor and red spears wrapped around its entire body. The Red Knight, the worst homunculus ever seen.
Like the Duke of Tiferet, it was a walking natural disaster.
The odds were not in Nili’s favor, then.
Countless witches have died at the tip of that spear after stepping out confidently.
But she denies it.
“Have you been having fun?”
The homunculus doesn’t speak human.
And if you look closely, his armor isn’t pure red like the red knight’s.
It only looks that way because there are veins running through the black armor.
A beautiful lotus flower, seemingly carved from crystal, floated from around his shoulders, slowly sucking in the energy of the unknown.
Nile tried to guess his identity.
Xin Xiu, a male witch, a protégé of the Duke of Tiferet.
“You’ll have to.
He crossed his hands over the spear he’d reclaimed.
A fiery golden glow emanated from one side of her helm.
“Because all you’ll have left is pain.”
It burned with a fierceness that was chilling even in the pitch blackness.
