City ​​of Witches 1065

Chapter 1065 – #253_Hide-And-Seek (2)

#1059

1.
“So, you were here after all?”

Lydia, entering the hangar with a flourish as if she were stepping into a ballroom, looked around.

A sudden tropical storm was battering the plate ceiling, the sound of the rain cooling the humid air.

“Hmm, am I a little late?”

Her long-awaited date was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, the desolate hangar looked like a wall had been torn down, with a lonely desk, ashes from burnt paper, and a portable bathtub left behind.

-Swish-

Lydia, like a detective, swiped her hand, clad in a pristine white opera glove, across the table.

A tiny bit of dust.

“Hoo.”

She blew the dust away.

Someone had been here until about two days ago, but now the place was empty.

As soon as she realized the culprit was Siwoo, Lydia had her secretary get the coordinates of Dorothy’s workshop. She had preemptively identified it when Dorothy was taken hostage before, just in case.

Siwoo’s motive was obvious.

“Well, it’s a cliché revenge.”

Lydia was pursuing the Rehar Group for a reason that was both easy and difficult to understand.

There was no doubt that Siwoo also hated Lydia, but it seemed he had prioritized the Rehar Group, the executors, over Lydia, the mastermind.

If it was the new version of Siwoo, who was cunning enough to devise such a scheme, not the innocent Si-soon, he would have considered the possibility that the immigration records would expose his movements.

The Rehar Group’s sphere of activity was shaped like an hourglass, thick at the bottom, encompassing North, Central, and South America.

Coincidentally, Dorothy’s workshop was on an island near the Dominican Republic, so it was natural for Lydia to visit this place first.

As you can see, she was a little late, and it was a bust.

While she was at it, Lydia slowly looked around the now-abandoned workshop.

It was called a workshop, but all sorts of documents and results of magical experiments had already been removed, making it essentially an empty villa.

Watching the heavy rain lashing against the windows, Lydia pondered.

“So, he’s alone for now?”

Lydia wasn’t just looking around the mansion for fun.

A place where someone has stayed for a long time retains their information.

He might have thought he had cleaned up thoroughly, but if he really wanted to erase all traces, he should have burned the house down.

Traces of life, fingerprints, hair, etc.

Even a witch would find it difficult to erase all such minor elements.

As a witch who dealt with ‘concepts’ and ‘particles,’ Lydia deduced that Siwoo had stayed alone in this mansion for about ten days.

Should she say that he was carrying out his revenge alone as expected?

Or was this even a deception to erase the traces of an accomplice?

She wouldn’t be able to figure it out until the immigration records came out.

However, there was something she could guess at this point.

“Information leaked.”

No matter how ghost-like the brand-new Siwoo’s plan was, his actions seemed to be aware of the conflict between Lydia and the Rehar Group.

Not just information that could be known on the surface, but as if reacting immediately to information that had leaked from the inside.

Even if Lydia had a tight grip on the Solidus Trading Company, it had already grown too large.

She couldn’t possibly know every single person down to the lowest level.

“You did a good job, you clever thing.”

Lydia discovered another invisible shackle that Siwoo had placed.

If there was such a loophole, if Lydia tried to move the entire company to find Siwoo, that information would be passed on to Siwoo through a rat within the company.

In this situation, the only ones who could move were a trusted few, or Lydia herself.

He had set up another trap, using Lydia’s greed to monopolize Siwoo as a medium.

2.
A simple basic economic principle.

If there is demand, there must be a supply.

What is the demand that has never disappeared in the history of civilized humanity?

Women, drugs, and weapons.

Terrorists, rebels, criminal organizations, countries prohibited from possessing certain weapons under international law, etc.

Countless premium customers want to possess weapons through unofficial routes.

The violence that weapons bring is the source of their power and the means to achieve their goals.

In the past, the arms trafficking business led by Dorothy was an organization that scratched the itchy spots of each customer.

Reliable and stable delivery, thorough security, maintenance support, and consistent quality.

Moreover, in an industry full of con artists, due to the ‘unofficial’ nature, it was a conscientious company that introduced the ‘industry standard.’

When Dorothy suddenly washed her hands and dissolved the trafficking business, it was the Solidus Trading Company that took over.

Lydia needed experienced personnel to run the business, so she lured Dorothy’s employees with huge salaries and guarantees of status.

Without any bloody power struggles, most of Dorothy’s former employees accepted the offer.

After all, they were just at the bottom of the system, and they needed someone to lead the business in place of their boss who had suddenly left.

They also needed a strong backer in the public society full of jackals.

Thus, with their mutual interests and Lydia’s skillful business acumen, the world’s best arms trafficking organization was successfully merged into the Solidus Trading Company.

However, Lydia, driven by her inherent greed, overlooked something.

Dorothy was a more popular boss than she thought.

“……”

Siwoo silently deciphered the coded message transmitted through the crystal ball.

[Rehar Group Hexennacht escaped. The relationship between Herja and Lydia is believed to have reached its worst. Return order to all former Solidus smuggling ships. Elite witches are stationed on each smuggling ship. Caution advised.]

Siwoo didn’t know exactly who sent this coded message.

Honestly, he was startled when a telegram suddenly arrived at Dorothy’s mansion in the middle of the night.

She revealed that she was Dorothy’s subordinate and explained the process of Lydia’s acquisition of Dorothy’s smuggling business, and that as a result, she was in a position to access various important information of the Solidus Trading Company.

She said she would help him get revenge, and she actually provided useful information.

Thanks to her, Siwoo was able to receive real-time reports on the conflict between the group and the company, and he could immediately change his plans accordingly.

He didn’t know how long he could trust her, though…

“……”

Siwoo held his breath for a moment.

A tingling sensation had lingered on his fingertips and then disappeared.

This time, it wasn’t a side effect of the Red Branch.

When leaving Dorothy’s workshop and moving his base, Siwoo had set up a device between the hangar doors.

It was a one-time magical signal that would notify him if someone opened the hangar doors of Dorothy’s workshop.

A kind of security device, you could say.

Was it Lydia, as expected?

Her speed in reaching the answer was incredibly fast.

For a brief moment, he wondered if it was the right thing to suggest a game of hide-and-seek to Lydia.

However, turning the Solidus and Rehar Groups against each other was definitely an act with a clear return.

No matter how mediocre they were, if they were within the ‘Rehar Group’ fence, it would be difficult for Siwoo to touch them easily.

As Herja and Lydia became hostile and the atmosphere between the company and the group became tense, the freelancers who only looked at performance left the fence on their own.

-Swoosh!!!

The heavy rain poured down.

Siwoo, hiding in the dense bushes and darkness, was hanging halfway down a cliff, looking down at the villa.

This was a coastal town in western Peru.

There were no large cartels like in Colombia or Mexico, but Peru was not considered politically stable either.

Until the 1990s, an extreme rebel organization that embraced Maoism had fiercely opposed the government, and although the leadership had been killed or captured and the organization had been dismantled, they were still active in fragments in these rural areas.

And where there are such criminal organizations, there are always illegal sources of income, and where there are illegal sources of income, the influence of the public reaches.

Those who dare not step into the honey pots of Mexico and Colombia attach themselves to these criminal small and medium-sized enterprises.

Today’s target was one of those mediocre people, one of the Rehar Group’s freelancers who had chosen to go into hiding thanks to Siwoo’s machinations.

From now on, it was a race against time.

Herja had gathered her close aides and united them, and in the process, a total of 27 ‘former’ Rehar Group members had scattered.

Like Pac-Man, he would tour South America and kill them as quickly as possible before being caught by the monster Lydia, who was chasing him from behind.

Siwoo wasn’t consumed by anger.

He was calm, to the end.

His cold reason told him that the chances of killing Lydia in this battle were slim.

There would be plenty of opportunities in the future.

After saving Dorothy first, after returning to Gehenna and establishing a firm power base based on the Hesed Society, after reaching an even higher level of magic.

With that in mind, Siwoo soared into the sky.

The first strike.

The most important moment that determines the outcome of the battle.

The moment he tried to quickly subdue his target as planned.

-Phew!

A bright light soared high into the sky with a high, sharp sound.

Not one, but two, three, a total of eight.

Magic that illuminated the surroundings like flares in the heavy rain and darkness revealed Siwoo’s figure.

“Got you, you rat. Did you think we’d be so easily defeated?”

The witch, shining in various colors under the different lights, was not the original target.

It was the 20th-ranked ‘Witch of Radiance,’ whom he had planned to hunt much later.

“Damn it, was it just that one guy who was chasing us?”
“So, all this mess was because of that one guy?”

“Lydia, you bitch.”
“Are they even from the Solidus Trading Company?”

At the same time, about a dozen witches, as if taking off active camouflage suits from a sci-fi novel, each released their concealment and chattered.

“Huh? Isn’t that him?”
“The red spear and black armor… I think it’s him?”
“What? So, he wasn’t from Solidus?”

Some even recognized Siwoo’s identity.

It was the hardship of a celebrity, you could say.

Siwoo’s prey were not just simple game NPCs.

They were not so passive as to be manipulated according to plan and be defeated one by one.

The freelancers had felt a sense of crisis and had attached themselves to the great witch, the ‘Witch of Radiance,’ to have self-defense against the unidentified attacker.

Their most confident method.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, violence for violence.

In magical combat, the difference in rank is absolute.

A single rank difference gives an overwhelming advantage, and if there is a difference of two or more ranks, the outcome is almost decided.

However, there is an easiest way to reverse this rank difference.

Increase the number of heads.

Based on the previous hunts, he had experienced that the moment the group of prey exceeded three, it became exponentially disadvantageous.

Even Siwoo, who was skilled in combat, was nearly impossible to fight against 17 witches, including a great witch, at the same time.

“If we catch that bastard…”
“Isn’t this actually a good thing?”
“Let’s do it…!”

Their eyes, which had been filled with fear of the unknown, now gleamed with greed as they realized their advantage.

“You came here because you were confident, right?”

Siwoo smiled back at the Witch of Radiance’s wry smile.

Yes.

He had been hoping they would come out like this.

“Sink deep.”

That’s why it was worth setting the hunting ground near the sea.