## Chapter 1204 – #284_The Proverbial Witch (3)
#1198
1.
“Cough.”
A damp cough escaped.
The taste of blood on the tip of my tongue suggested it wasn’t phlegm.
A throbbing shock pulsed through my entire body, and I felt unbalanced, likely due to my severed arm.
What happened?
Siwoo reflected.
But his mind, dulled by the impact, wouldn’t easily cooperate.
His body, having just endured a powerful shock, wasn’t as quick and responsive as usual.
But I had to move.
The enemy was still alive and well.
“Kuh…”
The Titan’s weight was heavier than it looked.
The shadows forming its armor had a specific gravity much heavier than platinum.
-Kwarurururu!
As the five-ton armor shifted amidst the half-collapsed bell tower, the tower, barely holding its shape, crumbled.
There wasn’t much to care about.
The only thing in this city that maintained a decent form was the stone wall that broadly surrounded it.
Massive destruction, incomparable to the small-scale destruction Siwoo had caused, was unfolding in real-time far away.
Orseria’s ‘Predation Zone’ had filled the entire fish tank.
On the purple screen, a cluster of wriggling tentacles took the shape of a flower bud.
Each tentacle, with its grotesque appearance reminiscent of a part of an outer god that had crawled up from the abyss, was strangely not just a monster.
The cluster, disorderly yet orderly, forming patterns through its own rules and geometric arrangements, brought to mind the non-existent term ‘tentacle craft’.
“How fierce. I was stabbed quite painfully.”
Orseria’s voice was heard.
The chorus of identical voices, created by tens of thousands or more mouths that had sprouted on the tentacles, was unsettling.
Feeling the concentration of adrenaline in his blood reach dangerous levels, he calmly recalled his memories.
“What was that just now…?”
“Hehe, think hard.”
Just a moment ago, Siwoo and Orseria had been facing each other, continuing their conversation.
Orseria had flirted with Siwoo and approached him naked.
When the distance between them closed to 50 meters, Orseria refused to allow any further approach and demanded that Siwoo remove the Titan.
“Ah.”
Now I remembered.
The fight had started right after that.
Siwoo had not complied with Orseria’s request.
After judging that it was impossible to close the distance any further without complying, he had taken out the ‘Fourth Green Spear: Basilisk’ and attempted a surprise attack.
As the name suggested, the ‘Green Spear: Basilisk’ was a unique poison spear that the Emerald Tablet had created solely to counter Orseria.
After discovering that Erysichthon, despite its unrealistic appearance, was fundamentally a living creature, the Emerald Tablet had fully utilized their expertise in poisons to create a synthetic neurotoxin.
This was not just a simple toxin but something closer to magic.
When injected into a living body, it would immediately break down cell walls and cause poisoning, and the poisoned cells would then proliferate the toxin.
Even a witch would die instantly if only a few hundred micrograms were injected into her body, and the self-proliferation of the toxin itself could neutralize the unrealistic digestive power of Erysichthon.
The timing of Siwoo’s attack and Orseria’s attack was perfectly synchronized.
Orseria had approached as if she had no intention of fighting, creating a ‘mouth’ on her back that released Erysichthon, and struck Siwoo.
He knew he was confident in close combat, but even without a moment of carelessness, the speed was difficult to respond to.
The tentacles of Erysichthon, whose entire body possessed a rigidity and elasticity that could not be compared to steel wires, boasted a threatening speed, power, and a density that could only be described as ‘dense,’ making it impossible to both evade and attack.
The shadow of the tentacles densely looming before his eyes.
In the blink of an eye, divided into dozens of 0.1-second intervals, Siwoo made his decision.
He sacrificed his right arm and stabbed the Basilisk into Orseria’s heart.
At the same time, Erysichthon cleanly devoured Siwoo’s right arm, Titan and all.
After that, an explosion-like shock occurred between the two, and Siwoo had flown to the bell tower, losing consciousness for a brief moment.
“……”
As the thoughts connected, the picture became clear.
The scene of completely closing in on Orseria, fondling her chest, and ripping her head off was just a hallucination seen through the gap of his lost consciousness.
That explained everything.
It also explained how Siwoo, who couldn’t see Orseria’s back while facing her, had seen the mouths densely sprouting on her back.
And why his right arm was missing in the hallucination.
Even after his consciousness had blacked out due to extreme focus on the battle, the lingering thoughts had shown him a hallucination.
“Bloom.”
With the incantation, a subtle distortion field enveloped Siwoo’s right arm.
In the blink of an eye, his restored right arm was covered by the Titan’s thick armor.
Since the battle with Lydia, he had achieved remarkable progress.
Among them was the ability to distort the damage he had taken to ‘not having happened’ by utilizing the ‘regeneration’ function of the lotus.
Although it was a temporary measure that required intensive treatment afterward due to feedback from the laws of the world, it was hardly even magic, but the most important thing was that it didn’t hinder the battle.
That was also why he had chosen to abandon his right arm without hesitation.
“I’ve finished healing too. Shall we dance again?”
The cluster of tentacles, which had been bunched up like the unopened bud of a tulip, unfurled, and Orseria appeared, sitting on the flower’s calyx like Thumbelina, swinging her legs.
He had hoped that the neurotoxin of the Green Spear would have some effect, but it didn’t seem to matter much.
Orseria’s appearance, with mouths sprouting all over her body, was distorted, but she didn’t seem to be affected by the poison.
Even Siwoo, who had been stabbed in the heart with a poison spear that he operated after taking an antidote, had recovered in an instant.
“You monster.”
“Well, I’d say you’re more monstrous, a terrifying murderer who fondles a lady’s pure chest and then turns around and rips her head off.”
“……?”
He flinched.
After properly assessing the situation, that scene was just Siwoo’s hallucination.
In the first place, the two had never exchanged words within 50 meters.
So, the fact that he had fondled her chest, then surprised her by blowing her head off, and the conclusion that ‘it was actually Orseria’s trap’ should only be known to Siwoo.
Yet, Orseria casually spoke about what had happened in that hallucination.
But there was no time to ponder for long.
Orseria, having finished her recovery, had immediately launched an attack.
-Whizz! Whizz! Whizz!
The tentacles of Erysichthon, which had been swaying languidly in the fog of predation, gained momentum in their movements.
The physical destructive power, the speed, the dense mouths sprouting on each tentacle, and the voracious eating ability they produced.
Superior in every aspect to the magnetic magic of Ea Sadalmelik, ‘The Maiden’s Loom’.
Erysichthon’s tentacles moved.
They created a sonic boom that was far beyond the audible range, drawing a few blurry lines over the medieval port city.
-Kwarururururung!
The thin lines expanded like explosions, causing massive destruction.
The fish tank, originally built as a breeding ground for the super-large familiar ‘Lakenlaken’, was quite large.
Even after hours of tag, there were still buildings that had maintained their shape.
——Kwaang!!!
However, the pure physical power of Erysichthon was enough to shatter the entire city with a single swing.
The structures that were directly caught in the trajectory of the whip were sent soaring high into the sky, defying gravity, regardless of whether they were made of wood or stone.
The same was true even if they didn’t make direct contact.
A whip was a tool that could allow even a human to break the sound barrier.
Moreover, the shockwave created by the tip of the bio-whip swung with all its might by a 23rd-level great witch was comparable to a super-large aerial bomb that created a mushroom cloud at the point of impact.
The atmosphere, struck by the violence of physical laws, immediately caught fire due to frictional heat.
Even the wood, damp from the sea breeze, was engulfed in flames like matchsticks.
Amidst the heavy explosions that echoed off the city walls, there was a black armor traversing the burning city.
-Giiiiiiing!
Siwoo, who had narrowly avoided the initial attack, simultaneously deployed two types of magic with the magic power amplified by the Angel’s Halo.
-Chwarurururuk!
Countless black ribbons extended like spiderwebs around Siwoo.
The ribbons, spread out to occupy all the space above, below, left, and right, were intentionally fixed loosely.
Erysichthon’s whip, whose tip speed reached 350 times the speed of sound, did not completely violate the laws of physics.
As a whip, it inevitably passed through a ‘plane’ trajectory.
The ribbons arranged in this way would serve as both slat armor and radar for a tank.
-Woong!
At the same time, a huge dimensional gate opened above Orseria’s head.
A magic that dropped beads of distortion fields like a downpour.
It was nothing short of a carpet bombing that was unavoidable for an opponent with a large body like Erysichthon.
-Kwagwagwagwagwang!
The red rain, with gravity added to its original projectile speed, achieved massive destruction, confirming the destruction of the already ruined city.
And the results were….
Neither was very good.
The one-time slat armor did not reduce Erysichthon’s speed at all.
The predation speed of the masticatory organs that sprouted on the tentacles was truly bizarre.
“Damn it.”
Siwoo, who had been slammed into the ground despite narrowly activating ‘space distortion’ for defense, cursed.
And the red rain, which had attempted a wide-area destruction, also failed to achieve significant results.
Erysichthon once again showed off its insane digestive power, proving that there was nothing it couldn’t eat.
It had even devoured all the concentrated distortion beads that fell, enveloping Orseria like a roof.
At this point, the vague speculation took a clear form.
Siwoo’s current power was like a ’23+1 level’ feeling, with the Demon God Project added to his original abilities.
This had consumed a tremendous amount of capital and the insights of several witches.
It was, of course, the essence of Gehenna’s accumulated magical technology.
No matter how much preparation Orseria made, even if she ground up witches and humans, it was nearly impossible for her to have more preparation than this.
At best, she would be close to a ’23 + 0.n level’.
“How cute. Did you really think you could beat me if you came with all those preparations, just the two of us?”
Theoretically, Siwoo should have overwhelmed Orseria, but she easily received his attacks and easily penetrated his defenses.
“Isn’t that too much?”
What this meant was clear.
Siwoo, who had fought mostly against opponents stronger than himself, could almost immediately recognize it.
Sometime, somehow, Orseria had crossed the wall.
Or she had been intentionally hiding her true power.
In other words, Orseria was a 24th-level enemy.
