Chapter 1059 – #251_After Death(5) – DeepL
#1053
1.
“Have you been having fun?”
The leader of Nili’s team in the Lehar group.
Naili Balor, 20th rank.
Her given name as a witch is ‘Witch of the Ma’an’.
“I hope so.”
Base of operations.
Medellin, Colombia’s second largest city after Bogotá.
Then the godmother of the Medellín cartel, which rose to prominence with the death of the Witch of Desire, who once united South American drug cartels.
“All you will have left is pain.”
Main hideout.
An upscale tavern in the hotel ‘Estelar Milla de Plata’.
“Hmmm, scary.”
He probably came here knowing this.
“Am I alone?”
With this much information, I was expecting the worst when I was ambushed.
But Nili’s anxious eyes were suddenly filled with desire.
She had a hunch.
The Witch of the Composition is a traitor who has conspired with the Witch of the Sword for the benefit of the Male Witch who has been captured in Hexenacht.
Various circumstances suggest that the Man Witch and the Witch of Composition were lovers.
Perhaps he sought out Nili to avenge his lover.
Foolishly, ‘alone’ on this South American continent, full of publicity.
Xinxiu.
Rumors about him are quite raucous.
The only male witch in history, the protégé of the Duke of Tiferet, the one who broke Rosie the Riveter’s spike in Hexenacht, the one who single-handedly killed the witch Ursula of the Netherworld.
But most heroes don’t believe the rumors.
It’s not uncommon.
A supernova, shining with Gehenna’s signature bluster.
Sandals, who were told they would rewrite history, a talent that would never be seen again in the history of witches.
Nili twisted the witch’s throat several times with her fancy rhetoric.
She’d knocked their overconfidence to the floor with her hands.
Most of them didn’t know how to fight, didn’t know how to fight.
They didn’t know the true meaning of the words ‘by any means necessary’.
“I want it.”
But even if Xin Xiu’s reputation was false, her kernels were still sweet.
A rare trophy that could buy a whole country, if not the male witch in front of you.
“Face it.”
Nili’s eyes glow with magic.
Drunk with revenge, drunk with playing the role of the hapless heroine.
She ‘sees’ Xin Xiu, who is standing in the distance, spouting off plausible deniability.
-Wow!!!
Everything in Nili’s field of vision turns grayish white.
They didn’t just lose their color.
They’ve lost their materiality and properties, and have merged into a single lump of stone.
This is the first Ma’an of Nili, the Ma’an of Petrification, a curse that appears in various myths and legends.
As fleeting as the camera’s shutter was in capturing its subject, it was not a hit.
The red knight was gone.
More precisely, he vanished in a flash of space.
Dimensional magic, not just high speed travel.
A normal witch would have panicked and frozen in place, but Nili’s reaction was swift.
Reacting to the strange magic waves and shadows behind her, she turned around.
-Whoosh!
It wasn’t the Red Knight casting a shadow over Nili’s head in the high-rise tavern, but a huge wooden table.
The petrified mind can only work as long as there is an object in view.
If there is an obstacle, it provides cover.
“No way!”
But if petrification was the only skill Nilee possessed, she wouldn’t be able to make a place for herself in the harsh world of public affairs.
-Keying!
With an eerie ripple of splintering steel, the stone table twists and turns.
Unlike the Petrifying Ma’an, the Ruinous Ma’an crushes things in its field of view.
It has the disadvantage of a narrower effective field of view, but its power is on another level.
Limiting movement with Petrify and finishing with Ruin is Nili’s winning pattern.
If he can find a table for cover, he can smash it to pieces behind him.
“No…?”
-Kwazizik!
But it’s not what you think.
There is no sign of the Red Knight amongst the twisted remains of the table.
The fur rises on the back of his neck.
The turn has passed.
Nilee glanced around, assessing the situation.
At the same time, he prepares a new Ma’an.
The light fixtures shattered by the ma’an and the darkness that followed.
The Red Knight rushed forward like a beast of prey.
“Face it!”
Nili’s third Ma’an, the Ma’an of the Forbidden Realm, glowed as she caught the sprint.
Its effect was to halt, to brake things in motion to near-zero speed.
Compared to petrification and destruction, the power itself is a deteriorating plate.
However, the Ma’an of this golden realm is Nili’s secret weapon.
If petrification and doom are the shutter of a camera, then the golden circle is the movie camera.
As long as you’re looking at it, it’s always on, so it perfectly fills in the gaps of the other two maans, with its stalling, blocking, and casting delays.
-Gain!
A visible strain is placed on the enemy knight’s movement as he sprints away, leaving a trail of red in his wake, too fast for the eye to follow.
His movements have slowed to a crawl, as if he were moving through water.
The force to move and the force to stop clashed sharply, scattering red sparks.
I caught it.
For a lesser witch, or one with the means to counteract it, avoiding either Petrification or Doom was not difficult.
But could petrification and destruction be avoided even when restricted by the Golden Rule?
Nili was certain of victory.
“Bloom.”
Until he saw the fiercely burning rings of gold above his head.
-Kii-ii-ii-ii-ing!
The fiercely burning golden sorties of magic immediately turned red.
A red that spreads along the veins of the gleaming armor.
The Red Knight, flailing as if caught in a tight net, is instantly accelerated to several times its normal speed.
The ground beneath their feet explodes, scattering them in a clash of energy and crackling flames.
Nili has chosen.
To find the best tactics, no matter what unforeseen circumstances she encounters.
The kind of improvisation that can only be honed in the heat of battle.
There was no point in avoiding him now.
The reason why the enemy knight, who had been avoiding Ma’an, appeared in front of him was to engage in hand-to-hand combat.
Keeping the right eye on him as long as possible, you use Petrify to catch him once more and finish him off with Doom.
It’s a game of chicken where the only thing that matters is who’s faster.
“Ah….”
However, contrary to Nili’s expectations, the enemy knight leaped into an oblique square instead of a head-on attack and leisurely shed the petrification.
As if a frontal assault hadn’t been on his mind in the first place.
At the same time, Nili’s vision blacked out with a terrible pain.
The tip of the spear that the Red Knight had so casually thrust through him had pierced his left eye.
“—-aaaahhhh!!!!”
With a ghastly scream, Nilee collapsed, clutching her face.
Ma’an is the beginning and end of Nili’s magnetic magic.
So she has some basic protection and countermeasures for her ‘eyes’.
But as if to say that none of that mattered, the red spear popped Nilee’s eyeballs out of their sockets with the ease of a jelly bean.
“Ew! Ew! Ew!”
Nilee cried out in tears of blood.
She’s a woman of experience and fortitude who doesn’t bat an eye at the slightest pain, but this isn’t just any pain.
A strange, unidentifiable distortion burns through her frontal lobe with a fierce intensity.
“Eh, c…Baal!”
Where did I go wrong?
Did he think she was a young, inexperienced witch?
Or the preconceived notion that she was from Gehenna?
Or was it the rumor that he was a disciple of the Duke of Tifferet, who always used honest tactics?
I hadn’t expected him to parry a blow and casually gouge out an eyeball.
I didn’t expect him to be so casual in his murderous attack.
“Ugh!
The ribbons wrapped around Nili’s body, pinning her to the ground like a taxidermy.
Her bones crunch as she struggles, unable to move.
“It hurts, doesn’t it? I’ve been there, and it’s no joke.”
Nili looked at the red shadow overhead.
He saw the tip of a spear digging into the other unharmed eye with a playful sneer.
“—-!!!!!”
A piercing scream once again drenched the silent tavern with rumbling gore.
The blind witch’s struggles were pitiful and desperate, but she could not break free of her bonds.
“You, you fucking asshole…. You, who do you think you are, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you.”
All Nili could do was mumble the words of his empty curse poisonously.
“I’ve never understood you.”
He doesn’t answer for a long time, and only much later does he speak up.
“I’ve never understood what it is that you want so badly that you can be so vicious, that you can throw off the human shackles you speak of so easily.”
His voice was indifferent and cold.
Not a hint of pity or compassion, or the exaltation, lust, and pleasure of a victor in a life-and-death battle.
The inorganic tone, devoid of all feeling, overwhelmed Nili.
“But now… I think I can understand you a little.”
Nilee held her breath.
The stale smoke of his cigarette stung her nostrils.
“Tell me. The location of the other teams in the Lehar Group. And the logistics fleet bound for Hexenacht. If you cooperate, I’ll spare your life.”
He didn’t have to look.
As a Ma’an, Nili has developed a mind’s eye.
Though it’s a crudely drawn croquis, I can see that his spear is aimed at Nilee’s defenseless heart.
I know he will pierce it without hesitation as soon as he’s finished.
“…Tim Betelgeuse, not far from here.”
Still, it was fear that made Neeley spit out the information.
Fear of the lengths to which he might go to extract the information.
A desperation that he’d rather tell the truth and make himself comfortable quickly.
“Thank you.”
As I finish my answer, a red branch pierces my heart like a fork through a cake.
The hotel’s bar in ruins, like a shattered artifact.
A dark red line of blood along Nili’s arm where she lay motionless.
A beautiful lotus flower, lazily sucking in all of their accomplishments.
“…….”
Watching it admiringly, Xiu tossed his half-smoked cigarette onto her bedside table and turned away.
