Chapter 1080 – #257_The Libra Witch (2)
#1074
1.
Another thirty minutes passed.
The struggle was long.
The explosive power befitting the 23rd rank of a descendant of the Deep Sea Witch.
Her power, which brought unprecedented destruction alongside the Sea God, was particularly threatening among the many formidable opponents Lydia had faced.
But that was the end of it.
Above the dark and rough open sea. The golden garden that had manifested by encroaching on reality.
In the center of the garden, where gaudy gold and silver treasures replaced blue trees, stood a giant scale.
At least in the witch society, it wasn’t the survivors who were strong.
The stronger ones survived by endlessly devouring the weaker ones.
“I’ll give you that you were quite something.”
Before Lydia, who looked down with arrogant eyes, L’Riel floated on the water, having lost the strength to resist.
Lydia Magnus’s magic dealt with the concept of ‘value’ itself.
Since magic that dealt with this concept was extremely vague and difficult, Lydia had inserted two concepts to facilitate the operation of her magic.
One was ‘negation.’
A power that denied and despised all the attributes of an object’s value, nobility, and specialness, like a worthless moth, a flame of annihilation, or a string of contradiction.
The other was ‘exchange.’
A transaction that allowed one to purely achieve what one desired, transcending any reason, providence, natural law, or even magic.
It was the ability to trade with the ‘world’ for a certain amount of gold.
“This is a big expense.”
The gold used in this transaction was not cheap gold with many impurities.
Wasn’t the burnt offering the most devoted worship for a humble human to reach God in the past?
‘Special gold coins’ made by sacrificing human souls and bodies, or the noble souls of witches.
It was a human sacrifice that melted the value of the most precious life and offered it to the world.
The cost of this battle was half of the total amount of gold Lydia had accumulated in her golden garden.
Even the special gold coins that could prevent ‘instant death’ were mercilessly consumed, four out of eight.
But the return was a super-luxury item called the ‘Deep Sea Witch.’
If she could use this bait to reel in Shin Siwoo, who had been a recent headache, it would be a more than worthwhile deal.
“Oh my, you’ll get a crooked mouth if you sleep there.”
Lydia, suspecting that she might be playing dead, created a thin needle and shot it towards her thigh.
-Thwack!
Even though the thin needle pierced her thigh, L’Riel, floating on the water, did not react.
Her autonomous defense was trying to activate but was unable to function properly due to a lack of magical power.
The moment Lydia was sure of her capture, a tough string like thin silk wrapped around L’Riel’s body.
-Whoosh!
With a strange sense of distortion, the ‘string of contradiction’ snapped.
Lydia didn’t see exactly what happened.
She only saw a red aura briefly cross the center of the string, and the string, which could bind anything and never break, was cut as easily as a spider web.
“Well, well, it seems like today is a really lucky day?”
Lydia, not at all intimidated despite not wearing any clothes, puffed out her chest.
At the end of her gaze was a black armor flying in with a ferocious aura.
Looking at the red spear held diagonally in one hand, there was no doubt who he was.
Shin Siwoo, who had become an ‘enemy’ in front of Lydia, who had touched his lover as she had boasted.
-Splash!
Lydia calmly watched Shin Siwoo snatch L’Riel, creating a spray of water.
It didn’t matter.
He wouldn’t be able to escape anyway, and Lydia would win against Shin Siwoo.
She could generously allow him to take care of her for a while.
“She’s not dead. Don’t worry.”
“……”
He immediately created distance and checked L’Riel’s condition.
His face was not visible because he was wearing armor, but after checking her pulse, his shoulders relaxed slightly as if relieved.
“Honestly, I didn’t think you’d go this far. I didn’t think you’d screw over both the Solidus Trading Company and the Lehar Group, and even make me, Lydia Magnus, go through all this trouble. And you even welded the gates of Hexennacht shut, excellent, excellent, excellent. I won’t hold back my praise.”
Lydia clapped her hands dryly.
At the same time, she deployed a reverse barrier to isolate the battlefield from the outside world.
She was making sure to grasp the opponent’s full power.
Shin Siwoo had changed since the last time she saw him.
Was it what one would call the unique aura of a great witch?
The thickness and volume of his magical power were far more advanced than when she saw him in Hexennacht, or when they faced each other in the pocket dimension where the gate was located.
It could be said that his ‘rank’ had changed.
“I guess that’s why he became a threat to me.”
However, Lydia did not feel even a speck of crisis.
It was because Shin Siwoo’s condition was a mess on the surface.
The armor was shiny, and the red spear was emitting a fierce aura, but the core was completely exhausted.
Presumably, he had just fought a battle.
There was no way to be sure who the opponent was, but she could make a guess.
Wouldn’t he have clashed with the resistance of the great witches in Hexennacht?
“You have no chance of winning.”
Such exhaustion would rob him of even the slightest chance of victory.
She fought relying on gold coins that became ‘totems’ rather than her own magical power, and she had gained advantages that other witches had not obtained at the cost of an unreasonable level that she alone could not properly utilize.
As long as her wealth allowed, Lydia would not tire.
The price she had to pay was replaced by the lives of others.
“But because I really like you, I’ll make you one last offer here.”
Lydia spread her arms wide as if passionately courting Siwoo.
At the same time, two artifacts appeared in front of Siwoo.
They were items that Siwoo was familiar with.
The gag that Lydia, who treated witches like commodities, put on her commodities.
The ‘leash,’ a special artifact of the gold coin witch that prevented the increase of magical power.
“Surrender quietly. Then, I, Magnus, will guarantee the life of the cute little queen. I always keep my contracts.”
An offer made despite being able to achieve everything she wanted with force.
Therefore, it was a truly exceptional act of generosity for Lydia.
Shin Siwoo would know that fact unless he was a fool.
“Why?”
Shin Siwoo asked in a cracking voice.
“If you’re asking why I’m doing this… the answer is simple. I want to possess you completely. Everything from your body to your mind and spirit. Oh my, it’s embarrassing to confess to a man for the first time?”
Shin Siwoo was worth that much.
Regardless of his individual uniqueness and strength, his ability to create a situation to this extent with insufficient power.
His daring actions of manipulating the deeply rooted Lehar Group and the Solidus Trading Company, and single-handedly invading Hexennacht and stirring things up.
Even his handsome face and upright character.
Looking at him, it was like a jackpot had been hit on a slot machine, and the sound of countless gold coins jingling echoed like a hallucination.
The Shin Siwoo that Lydia had coveted in the past was much, much more than that.
More radiant and lovely than everything Lydia had ever obtained, than everything she had ever held in her hands.
Lydia narrowed her eyes and murmured, looking at the radiance.
“You are truly beautiful.”
Her affectionate gaze, as if looking at an object already in her possession, was warm, and therefore, disgustingly creepy.
“You don’t have to worry that much.”
Her persuasion continued in a cheerful tone.
“We’ll understand each other little by little. Our values and personalities are different, so we’ll clash a little, but time will solve it. I’ll try. I’ll try to adjust to you one by one.”
“You can resent me as much as you want for the time being. You can criticize me, insult me, hate me, and try to make things difficult for me behind my back. Because someday you’ll understand my true feelings.”
Lydia gestured to Siwoo with an increasingly intoxicated movement.
“I’ll give you everything in the world, I’ll give you luxury that won’t run out no matter how much you spend, and pleasures that you won’t get tired of no matter how much you consume. I’ll give you honor that no one can look down on, the power to control the lives of others with a flick of your chin, and the awe that will make all the witches in the world fear the three letters of Shin Siwoo.”
“I can give you everything.”
“I won’t neglect you like those Gehenna idiots who don’t know your true value. You’ll shine in my arms, higher than anyone else.”
“Instead, you just have to promise me one thing.”
Lydia’s words, which had been expressing her deep affection as if confessing her love, suddenly stopped.
As if this was the most important climax of this play.
“Just become my possession.”
For the first time since she had known her, Siwoo looked into Lydia’s eyes.
Not the beautiful eyes that looked like they were made of melted gold, but the nature of Lydia hidden within them.
Right now, Lydia was whispering a love as transparent as a girl confessing her first love.
That heart was not at all false, it was true and even innocent.
But if you looked a little deeper, you could find the distortion lurking behind that purity.
A fundamental twist that could not be measured by human sensibility.
A child desires a toy more passionately than anyone else until they get it.
But once they get their hands on it, they lose interest in just two or three days.
Lydia’s desire was of that kind.
An innocent desire that craved what she didn’t have and despised what she had.
That was the ‘love’ that Lydia Magnus spoke of.
“Bloom.”
Even if that wasn’t the case, there was no room for negotiation in the first place.
Lydia Magnus was a powerful enemy that had to be confronted.
Wasn’t it a familiar thing to recklessly rush at a monster?
“Think carefully. There’s no need to end in tragedy because of pointless pride. A woman’s grudge after being dumped is scary, you know?”
Lydia narrowed her brow as if she was very sorry, or as if she had been betrayed.
But Siwoo had no time to pay attention to such things.
He only reached out for the last resort he had left.
Previously, Siwoo had collaborated with the ‘Soul Witch’ Gretel Neftis to create a passage.
A passage that reduced the contact surface between the unconscious and the conscious, which could mix at any time.
In that passage, there was a huge ‘door’ that blocked the overflowing unconscious.
The way to open this door was very simple.
-Thwack!
Siwoo, holding the spear upside down, forcefully pulled the spearhead towards his heart.
The red branch easily pierced his chest with a hollow sound.
Lydia was looking at Siwoo with an expression that showed no particular emotion.
He wouldn’t be pretending to be dead, and he wouldn’t be doing something like a loser’s fantasy of committing suicide in front of the person he was obsessed with.
Because Shin Siwoo, as she knew him, was a man who struggled for life more intensely than anyone else.
And then.
-Thud
The clover in Siwoo’s inner pocket crumbled, and the spear that had protruded from his back with a strange pulse was pushed out.
The affected area, wrapped in a distortion field, was immediately repaired, and Shin Siwoo’s head, which had been slumped, slowly turned to face forward.
The atmosphere changed as if the person had changed in an instant.
Magical power overflowing, filling the body that had been like a half-corpse.
Lydia asked.
“Who are you again?”
The reversing consciousness mixed with Siwoo’s original consciousness.
The unconscious, released from the oppressed prison, cheered in liberation.
“Your most feared.”
A ferocious beast that purely craved magic more than any other being.
“Enemy.”
Descended upon the battlefield.
Chad black knight