Chapter 1069 – #254_Rage, Purity, Greed
#1063
1.
The project still had a long way to go.
A day of rest, three days in Akula, was enough.
After spending a day with Sharon and Lulue, Siwoo locked himself in an empty room.
A silent space where neither light nor sound could penetrate.
He closed his eyes and began to meditate.
It was a time he hadn’t been able to have recently.
He had been in the middle of enemy territory, and he had been too busy chasing a tight hunting schedule.
Finally, he had time for contemplation.
Siwoo began to review each of his previous battles.
He had been through a more concentrated period of combat than ever before.
Amidst screams and roars.
In the fleeting moments of crossing the line of death.
In the primal fear of possibly dying.
And in the realizations he gained from overcoming it.
He received the essence, condensed and transformed into a single drop, on his hands.
He opened the horizon of his thoughts and constantly sought new possibilities.
Was there no better way?
Could he not have fought better?
What was lacking to reach a higher level?
An intense concentration of power that ordinary humans could not reach led Siwoo’s consciousness into a state of trance.
A black, dark, and infinite space.
Ain, who had embodied all the witch’s achievements in his mental world.
An incomparably huge and magnificent structure unfolded before his eyes.
This was the history and achievements of Shin Siwoo that he had written so far.
He had remodeled Ain hundreds of times.
He had modified and customized his self-magic solely to eradicate his targets.
After dealing with a target, he would dismantle the magic he had built up again.
He would rebuild the dismantled magic to suit the next target.
“…….”
The methods he had thought were the best at the time.
The methods he had taken because they were the most efficient.
But was this really the answer?
If he created a framework that could only respond to specific situations, wouldn’t he be imprisoning himself within it?
To reach a higher level, shouldn’t he break out of his shell and fly?
This place was a crossroads.
What was the magic for?
What was the achievement for?
What was the striving and stepping up for?
He asked himself, not anyone else, not for anyone else.
“Bloom.”
The subtle appearance of the small drop of magical power on his fingertip as it vaporized was so beautiful, like a flower blooming brilliantly, that he attached such an incantation to it.
That magic had stood against unreasonable evil.
Ea, who tried to take the lives of Odile and Odette, and Bianca, who tried to kill Takasho.
Although his own power was insufficient, he did not run away because the sense of justice that he could not back down from remained in his heart.
It changed.
The structures within Ain changed their form in conjunction with Siwoo’s mental image.
-Clank
The magic, newly constructed with fractals as their framework, resembled a huge flowering tree.
Was this it?
Was this the form of magic he should pursue?
When Siwoo shook his head, the flowering tree collapsed.
That magic was the greed of a pure scholar.
Just as a climber climbs a mountain simply because it is there, he simply enjoyed researching and developing magic.
He forgot all other thoughts in that moment.
The moment he took a step after agonizing as if his head would explode was so ecstatic and dizzying.
-Clank, clank
As his mental image changed, it changed again.
A golden tower soared high, towering over Siwoo as if piercing the sky.
But this time, too, he was not satisfied.
The golden tower, which seemed to be eternally immutable, collapsed like a sandcastle.
It changed again.
That magic was the rage of someone trying to reclaim what had been taken.
To save Dorothy, he harbored murderous intent and scattered more destructive power than ever before.
Even at this moment, Siwoo was internalizing all learning at a faster pace than ever before, sublimating it into his own realm.
Contrary to the complexly intertwined thoughts, the structures of Ain moved in an orderly manner.
-Clank, clank, clank
The form he finally achieved resembled a fiercely burning flame.
A flame solely for burning the enemy.
A barbaric flame that, if not properly controlled, would spread to his own body and lead to destruction.
2.
The leader of the Rehar Group.
The war witch, Herya Balhiri, could not contain her anger.
“Damn it!”
The thick crystal glass, thrown by her muscular arm, exploded like a grenade.
“Leader, please stop breaking the glasses. We’re running out of money now.”
The vice-leader screamed and tried to stop Herya.
“Lydia, you goddamn bitch!!!”
After the flood, the homunculi disappeared.
The Rehar Group, whose main business was hunting and proxy hunting of homunculi, accepted Lydia’s suspicious request to overcome their financial difficulties.
But that was like gobbling down a poisoned apple.
Lydia either sank her own ship or lured the Rehar Group into complacency by accepting them into Hexennacht, and then began to cut off their limbs in earnest.
As a result, several of her close teams were annihilated, and half of the Rehar Group was cut off.
The most humiliating thing was that in the midst of such unilateral violation, there was nothing they could do.
It wasn’t like Herya was doing nothing.
She had planned to sink any other smuggling fleets she saw.
But Lydia was prepared.
Then, she wanted to avenge Talia and her subordinates by killing the witch of the Solidus Merchant Guild.
But that would only give them a pretext.
At least formally, the Solidus Merchant Guild seemed to be embracing the Rehar Group.
Because Lydia had pretended to step back and allowed the Rehar Group to join Hexennacht.
The moment Herya launched a preemptive attack, Lydia would use that as an excuse to launch a full-scale….
“Aaaah! Aaaah!”
“Leader! Leader! Calm down!”
Herya, who was suffering from a headache, went mad and collapsed.
A witch was someone who had transcended humanity and reached the outer realms.
A great being who, not satisfied with that, harbored a desire to reach even higher places.
Such a being should have the dignity befitting their position.
Morality, ethics, trust, love?
Power, wealth, popularity, respect?
All are futile.
If you have companions to walk the rough road like a wilderness, you can let go of everything else.
That was the purity that a witch should have.
“Lydia….”
That was why magic was pure to Herya,
and in that sense, Lydia was a low-down bitch.
A witch who was distracted by things other than magic.
A low-down whore who was soaked in vile desires and engaged in all sorts of vulgar acts.
“Leader.”
It was the vice-leader who calmed Herya, who was disgustingly venting her anger.
“I have a great idea.”
“What is it?”
“It’s an idea to give Lydia a big middle finger.”
Hearing the vice-leader’s words, Herya let out a cry mixed with joy, like a scholar who had found the answer after a long period of agony.
“Let’s do it right now!”
3.
After saying goodbye to the children of the House of Angels, Lydia sat on the sofa with a much lighter expression.
She had a relaxed expression, as if her stress had been relieved.
“Have you been well?”
“Yes, Mother.”
Kiara Beris, the ‘Witch of Foresight,’ one of the ‘Werfana’ witches who had covered her eyes with a white blindfold, answered in a polite manner.
She was Lydia’s daughter, who had graduated from the ‘House of Angels’ just a while ago and had joined ‘Las Werfanas.’
“Kiara, how are you doing these days?”
“There are still many things in the world that I don’t know, Mother.”
“Is work manageable?”
“…Well, yes….”
Lydia knew why Kiara was hesitating.
Originally, the reason Lydia had brought Kiara to the House of Angels was to use her as a monitor.
Even though she was a 18th-level witch, she was specialized in excellent surveillance magic, so she thought she would be useful in many ways.
But it could be said that the timing was very bad.
Kiara, who had been raised to predict and track homunculi, had lost her job before she even started her internship because the homunculus seed had dried up due to the ‘Gate.’
It was as if her department had disappeared as soon as she joined the company because the industry had collapsed.
However, in the midst of searching for a needle in the desert alone like now, nothing would be more reliable than her help.
Because what she needed now was absolute loyalty rather than detection skills themselves.
“Kiara.”
Lydia called out softly to the dejected Kiara.
“I need you.”
Kiara’s shoulders trembled.
It was a tremor of overwhelming emotion, like a follower who had gained the favor of a cult leader.
“Can you help me?”
“Of, of course. Mother…. I will give my body and soul….”
“My, you’re still a crybaby.”
When Lydia held out her hand, Kiara knelt on one knee and kissed it reverently.
A pair of golden eyes watched the scene as if in ecstasy.
To a witch, magic was like their entire life.
In other words, the way a witch viewed magic was the attitude of that witch towards life.
To Lydia, magic was always greed.
Someone might ask her.
What is the greed for?
Then she would answer without a moment’s hesitation.
Many things.
Even more things.
More than what I have in my hands now, more than what I have ever held in my hands.
Enough to fill the horizon and the coastline.
Enough to make the effort to count the total amount ridiculous.
Like the starlight filling the sky.
She wanted, craved, and desired more wealth, fortune, power, treasure, authority, loyalty, and faith.
It was foolish to ask for a reason.
Those who had decided on their path did not need motivation or direction.
Without knowing how to be satisfied, how to be humble, how to be restrained, how to be considerate.
Endlessly greedy, arrogant, wasteful, and contemptuous, she would devour everything.
She only wanted that.
Now was the time to show it.
The fear of those who had not decided on their way of life to those who had.
