City ​​of Witches 172

Chapter 172 – #37_Friendship?(5)

#170

1.
It’s often said that monsters guard the gates of hell.
Why wouldn’t they?
Like the three-headed dog in Greek mythology.

But Siwoo could say with certainty.
If they were going to put a monster to guard hell, it would be much more effective to put that son of a bitch that was chasing Siwoo and Sharon like crazy right now.

Considering the difference in speed between the two, it was obvious that they would be caught soon if they ran along the road to the boundary of the otherworld.
So, Siwoo tried to shake him off by weaving through the alleys between buildings.

-Bang! Thud! Crash!

But the homunculus didn’t stop.
It smashed into a parked bus with its head, sending it flying into the air, destroying the sides of commercial buildings, and knocking down utility poles and streetlights as if they were twigs, continuing its pursuit.
It was like a dog running wild on a meticulously crafted miniature set for special effects.

Anyway, while they could maintain some distance by using obstacles to circle around, it seemed difficult to shake it off completely or get out of the barrier.
The moment they ran in a straight line, they would be caught due to the superior physical difference.

-Kuoohhhhhh!!
“Damn, that’s fast!”
“Mmmbmmbmmbmm…!”

The first sound was the roar of the enraged monster.
The second was Siwoo’s annoyance at the monster that he couldn’t shake off no matter how much he ran.
The last was the strange sound Sharon made because her cheek kept bumping against his chest plate as she was held in an awkward position.

“Sharon! What the hell is that thing!”
“I-I don’t know either…! I’ve never seen anything like that!”

Siwoo asked, gasping for breath, but Sharon just shook her head, not giving him a clear answer.
Should they just fight it?
Siwoo asked, just in case.

“Can’t we somehow fight that thing? I’ll try!”
“No! No! Absolutely not! The homunculus that caused the most terrible disaster in history had twenty pairs of eyes! That’s not a level we can handle!”

Forty eyes were the worst ever?
Siwoo glanced over his shoulder at the raging homunculus.

“It looks so disgusting.”

That alone made him feel a little bad.
It looked like a primary school student had roughly molded it out of black clay.
You could tell which were the front paws, which were the back paws, and which was the head, but it was a mess, as if it had been stepped on.
The stench and roar that came from it every time it howled made his whole body crawl.

But the important thing was not that the homunculus looked disgusting and grotesque like a beast from hell.
It was the eyes that were densely packed all over its body.
The number of them seemed to be well over four digits.

“Then who has to come to catch that thing?”
“I don’t knowwww!!! Why does this kind of thing always happen!!”

Sharon, clinging tightly to Siwoo, began to lament her life, sobbing.

“The marks are inherited strangely! Explosions happen during experiments! I ended up in debt because I accidentally blew away my research papers! And… and what is that monster!”
“C-calm down for now and hold on tight, I’m going to run!”
-Kuoohhhhhh!

The distance closed again, so this time they decided to use the building.
Using the speed at which the distance was reduced by tens of meters in one step, they jumped like a triple jump, converting it into jumping power.

-Crash!

Siwoo jumped into the fourth floor of the building in one go, with a shadow spread out to prevent glass shards from flying at Sharon.
Siwoo entered the building, smashing computers and documents, as if it was an office space.
And almost without any time difference, the monster’s snout burrowed into the building like a woodpecker’s beak eating a worm.

“You crazy bastard!”
“Kyaaaah!”

There was no time to catch their breath.
Siwoo quickly picked up Sharon, who was about to have her ankle bitten by the monster, and ran to the other side of the building.

-Kiahhhhhh

The roar of the beast, having narrowly missed its prey, hit their ears.
At the same time, a tremendous wind leaked out, scattering everything in the hallway.

“Got it!”

But this was a good sign.
The fact that the monster was still behind them meant that they could put a wall between them when they ran out of the building, breaking the window on the opposite side.
There would be a delay in the pursuit, and if they used that gap to hide with the music box or run further away, it wouldn’t be a dream to get out of the otherworld barrier.

“Wow… this is really messed up.”

But Siwoo’s dream crumbled like a soap bubble the moment he turned around at the sudden sound.

-Grrr!
-Woof woof woof!

Dozens of black dogs, which had appeared out of nowhere, were kicking around the hallway and running towards Siwoo and Sharon to present them as a gift to their mother.

-Hooowww!
-Awooo!

Moreover, some of them seemed to be reporting Siwoo’s escape route with howls.
At this rate, there was no hope for the only hope they had, which was to shake them off or play hide-and-seek.
Seeing the situation getting worse by the minute, it was almost admirable.

They were going to be caught.
It was going to be soon.
The black dogs were definitely faster than their mother because of their smaller size.
The problem was that the moment they got into a scuffle here, they would be completely trapped.
If the distance that was barely maintained was narrowed, the only thing left was a head-on fight.

A black dog that had chased Siwoo right behind him leaped roughly.
At that moment, Sharon, who was held in his chest, fumbled something out of her sleeve, put it in her mouth, and then pointed her wand behind her.

“Balance!”

At the same time as Sharon’s incantation, he felt his ears getting hot.
A small ball of fire appeared in front of the wand and then emitted flames in a fan shape.
It wasn’t like the flamethrowers they had seen in movies.
The flames that spread like a wave completely burned down an entire floor of the building.

“That was the last one… I used up all the magic power I collected while running away!”
“Good job, Sharon! Thanks to you, we survived!”

They had managed to shake off the pack of dogs by a hair’s breadth and arrived at the opposite side of the building.
They couldn’t just jump down.
The mother dog, who had pinpointed Siwoo and Sharon’s location right next to the landing point, had struck the side of the building with her huge front paw.

-Thud!

The vibration echoed throughout the entire building.
The black dog’s front paw, with its red eyes densely packed, tore off the building like it was a Lego.
The scene was vividly visible in slow motion.

On its body, there were bulges and curves that had not been there before, like maggots swarming on a corpse.
Every time it moved, black dogs popped out, biting at its skin and flesh, and began to climb the outer wall of the building fiercely.

What is that?

“Sharon, hold on to me!”
“I’m already holding on!”
“Hold on tighter!”

If they stayed like this, they would be caught up in it.
Siwoo, judging that, grabbed Sharon tightly and immediately stretched out his ribbon towards the top of the building.
Using the elasticity of the ribbon that had stretched out in an instant, he was thrown into the air and landed on the roof.

He glanced down and saw that the mother dog was already slamming into the wall of the building, and the black dogs were clinging to the outer wall like cockroaches, climbing at a speed that seemed like they were running.

“Let’s split up. I’ll draw their attention, so you run away first.”
“Sharon, that’s not important right now.”
“It is important! We’ll both die if we stay like this! It’s my fault for dragging you into this hunt, so I’ll take responsibility! Hurry! Run away first!”
“Sharon!”

Siwoo firmly grabbed Sharon’s shoulders, who was almost in a panic.
For the first time, they had time for a proper conversation.
Maybe there was a way out of this mess.

“It’ll take time for that big guy to get up here anyway. Until then, only the small fries will come up.”

Siwoo was right.
No matter how fast the homunculus was for its size, it was heavy because of its large body.
Running on flat ground and climbing a building were completely different abilities.

“So listen to me. There’s something weird about that thing.”
“What?”

Siwoo began to explain the clues he had found while running away as quickly as possible.

“Sharon, do you think that thing is really a homunculus with thousands of eyes?”
“Whether I think so or not, you saw it too. Its whole body is covered in eyes.”
“But do you think that thing is really dozens of times stronger than the worst homunculus in history?”
“That’s….”
“Look.”

At first, they were just terrified.
They couldn’t help but feel instinctive fear at the overwhelming difference in physique, which was enough to collapse an entire department store and destroy everything in its path just by walking.
But as they ran away frantically, some suspicious points arose.

That homunculus didn’t have the experience of a strong person.
All the powerful enemies Siwoo had faced had an aura to match.

For example, Ea Sadalmelik, who had an oppressive presence that made it feel like you would suffocate just by breathing next to her.
For example, Della Redcliffe, who seemed like she would completely take away the initiative if you were careless for even a moment.
They were all great witches of the 20th rank or higher.
Among them, Ea was a witch of the 21st rank, who wouldn’t be strange if she received a title.

The power to collapse a department store was great.
The agility to chase them relentlessly, destroying the night streets, was also great.
But that was it.

Siwoo drew a picture in his head.
What if Ea was there?
Could Siwoo have escaped this far?

No way.
No matter how much Siwoo had grown stronger through various incidents, he knew from experience and in his head that he wouldn’t last even a minute against Ea at full power.
He had a history of being knocked down miserably by Ea’s ‘slightly’ serious attack.

“Up to here, it’s just a hunch. But look. You saw that all those black dogs are coming out of that thing, right?”
“Yeah, I saw it! When I came up just now.”

Sharon also seemed to have sensed something, and the anxiety that had made her look like she was about to die had disappeared.
Instead, she perked up her ears and listened to Siwoo’s words.

“A little while ago, I read the magic power of that homunculus with my own eyes. It’s very disorganized. It wasn’t concentrated in one place, but scattered all over the place.”
“Huh…?”
“What if the eyes on that body aren’t all from one individual? What if that mother dog is just a ‘colony’?”

In a desperate situation, a human’s thinking becomes narrow and biased.
Therefore, Sharon had not thought of it at all while running away from the mother dog, which had eyes all over its body like decorations.

The stronger a homunculus is, the stronger it becomes, that is, the more important the legacy it possesses.
It uses a variety of magic comparable to a witch, making it that much more difficult to hunt.

But what about that mother dog?
It doesn’t use any decent magic other than scattering puppies.
When chasing Sharon and Siwoo, it had only used its physical abilities.
Even now, when it had become a dog chasing a chicken, it was only hitting the outer wall of the building or falling down while trying to climb it.

Was that unsightly appearance really the behavior of a homunculus with more than four digits of ‘eyes’?

“Come to think of it, that’s true…?”

If there were only 20 eyes or so, Siwoo would have told her not to say nonsense and to prepare to run away.
But that number was too unrealistic.
And Siwoo’s persuasion was extremely realistic.

The time for deliberation was not long.
The puppies that had already climbed the outer wall had surrounded Siwoo and Sharon on the roof.
Even from below, the mother dog, realizing that it couldn’t just jump in place, was taking a running start from a distance and clinging to the outer wall of the building.
Every time the heavy body clung to the building, the building broke and swayed greatly at the same time.

“So, what are you going to do?”

Sharon clenched her wand tightly, knowing that it was meaningless without magic power.
Siwoo glared at the puppies with his spear, and said as if chewing on his words.

“Thanks to that, we’ve had a hell of a time. We should give them a taste of their own medicine.”