Chapter 179 – #39_A Pleasant Day
#177
1.
It was a good day today.
A male student, thoroughly drunk to the point of his scalp tingling, chuckled while holding a cigarette in an alleyway slightly off the bustling downtown streets.
“How did he manage to bring them? They were so pretty.”
His friend, leaning against the stone wall opposite him, lit a cigarette and joked.
Both he and his friend were quite drunk, so every word was laced with the laughter of fishermen who had just caught a big one.
“I told you, Taehyun is good at charming older girls.”
“It’s amazing he brought three, and they’re all good-looking.”
“Who do you like the most?”
“That, Soyeon? The one with the bob cut on the far right. She’s the hottest. I know, those quiet-looking girls are wild in bed, you know?”
It was a Friday night during summer vacation.
He had been idly lazing around in his studio apartment when he received a call from his friend and rushed out to a trendy bar.
Thirty minutes of hair styling, an outfit he had been saving from the department store.
It was worth the effort he had put into primping, despite the hassle.
Even though he didn’t smoke, the quality of the girls Taehyun had charmed (while also preventing the women they were with from escaping) was considerable.
Everyone liked different girls, so the matches were good, and after some drinking games, they weren’t too resistant to skinship.
“I’m good at setting the mood, aren’t I?”
“What are you talking about? I was the one hyping it up next to you. You’re acting like you did it all by yourself.”
“Oh, that’s true.”
With his smooth talk, natural laughter, and transformation into a playful guy friend, he lowered their guard.
Spending the second round at a cocktail bar, creating a subtle atmosphere, and then luring them back to his studio apartment was his foolproof pattern.
The fact that he had slept with over 40 women was his biggest boast among his friends.
“Let’s go in and speed things up. If it gets too late, they might say they want to go home.”
“Okay, just let me finish this.”
As he was fiddling with his phone while his friend smoked, he suddenly felt the urge to pee.
“Hey, shit, I suddenly need to pee. Where’s the bathroom here?”
“Just pee here, there’s no one around anyway. I’ll keep watch.”
“Let me know if anyone comes.”
He fumbled with his pants and went into the narrow alleyway.
When drunk, his mood improved, but his body felt heavy.
He figured it was better to just take care of it here rather than bother searching for a bathroom.
The moment he entered the alley, he felt a chilling coldness.
“I haven’t even peed yet, what the hell.”
He aimed at the drain and emptied his bladder, which was swollen with soju and beer.
“By the way, where are we going for the second round?”
He called out to his friend, who was leaning against the wall outside the alley.
There was no reply.
“Hey, where are we going for the second round?”
He wasn’t that far away, and with this level of noise, there was no way he couldn’t have heard.
He tried joking around.
“Did you pass out? If you sleep here, your mouth will twist, man.”
Only a desolate silence returned.
Amidst the continuous stream of urine, he noticed something strange.
It was 1 AM, which could be considered the peak time of a Friday night.
Even if it was a bit off the main downtown area, near a bar mixed in with studio apartments, there should have been a lot of noise.
Drunk women crying while sitting down, guys hitting on them, and the sounds of students making a ruckus at outdoor stalls should have been heard.
But it was as quiet as a library.
Not even the usual sounds of cars or delivery motorcycles could be heard.
The sense of unease was so strong that even he, drunk as he was, felt something was off about such a trivial issue.
“What a fucked up thing to happen.”
An inexplicable anxiety rose more thickly than the stench of the alley, but he half-heartedly chuckled and reassured himself that it was nothing.
He believed that the sudden goosebumps were just a side effect of his alcohol-addled body acting up.
After all, it had been such an ordinary day, hadn’t it?
Alcohol, night, women, and friends.
The fleeting brilliance of youth, burning like a shooting star, a short golden age given only for a few years in life.
He was just enjoying it to the fullest.
“Why aren’t you answering, you bastard.”
This bizarre phenomenon of the usually bustling night streets being plunged into silence.
He turned back from the alley, intending to talk about it at the bar, when he froze in place.
“……Haha.”
If his friend, who had been fiddling with a dating app while smoking, had turned into a decoration from a haunted house.
Wouldn’t anyone laugh like that?
Skewered on a red-hot skewer that pierced his sternum, lungs, and probably his heart, suspended 50cm in the air.
Wouldn’t anyone let out a hollow laugh?
“What the hell is this?”
His pupils were dilated as if large holes had been punched through them.
A red tongue poked out of his half-open mouth.
The bloodstains, soaking his clothes from the point of penetration in his chest, looked like rust had flowed down.
The face, stiff with terror, was like a grotesque mask, a far cry from the laughing and joking he had been doing just moments ago.
There was no way his friend had suddenly learned to levitate.
Something must be holding him up.
His head tilted back slightly, and he looked at the figure behind his friend.
Cosplay? A knight from an MMORPG game? Lord of the Rings? Gundam?
Those were the first words that came to mind when he saw the giant armor that was nearly 2 meters tall.
A full plate armor, decorated in red and with exaggerated embellishments.
Inside the helmet’s black space, countless red eyes flickered, staring this way.
A mineral gaze reminiscent of a spider’s eyes.
A cold, emotionless gaze that simply looked down at its prey pierced through his entire body.
In that moment, he realized.
This was not a joke.
This was not a situation to be taken lightly.
This was not a hidden camera prank, of course.
“Sa….sa….”
He tried to shout for help, but his throat felt like it was sealed with lead, and only a hissing sound escaped.
No matter how much he looked around, there was no one to help.
Run, just run.
As he tried to run away with that vain hope, he felt a burning pain in his chest.
He hadn’t even seen it swing.
A menacingly red spear pierced his chest.
His friend, who had been impaled on the end of it like a skewer, was now lying on the ground like trash, half of his upper body torn off.
That was the last memory he had.
2.
The homunculus, having quickly dispatched the prey it had invited to its hunting ground, withdrew its spear.
No trace of the hunt remained.
The corpse, stripped of all ties and existence, turned into a meaningless pile of ash, mixing with the blood and decorating the asphalt.
The red knight felt no pity or emotion for it.
From the start, ‘it’ was not designed to feel any emotions.
It eliminates those who seek its legacy.
To maintain its existence, it kills witches and steals their magic.
When that is not possible, it attacks humans, devouring their ‘ties’ and converting them into magic to replenish itself.
It simply carries out its tasks according to a mechanical algorithm, as it has done for hundreds of years.
The only difference is that, as time has passed, it has gained experience and learned various tricks while performing a series of actions.
Having finished its simple meal, the red knight thought.
It was not enough.
It was still hungry.
This was not enough to recover from the damage sustained in the recent battles.
The pink-haired adversary was the strongest witch it had faced in hundreds of years.
She could cleave mountains with a single blow, cause earthquakes with a single horn, and withstand the distortions caused by the red branches with her own body.
No matter how much it tried to hide and disguise itself using the red branches, she would surely appear.
And all of its past experiences and the logic circuits of the red knight predicted its inevitable defeat.
But the red knight felt no emotion about it either.
It was simply reviewing various methods to find a solution in a mechanical manner.
First, it needed more magic, or more humans.
The magic remaining in its body was far below the normal level, only half of half.
If it clashed with the pink witch again in this state, it wouldn’t be able to fight properly, let alone escape.
Hunting other witches in this state was too risky.
The only targets it could fight in its current, unrecovered state were apprentice witches, not full-fledged ones.
Then…
The red knight readily chose the last option that came to mind.
Let’s devour humans, more humans.
It calculated the amount of magic it needed and the magic it could obtain by killing one human.
About 4,000.
That would be enough to recover to a level where it could hunt witches.
-Splish
The sound of stepping into a sticky pool of blood was heard.
It sounded somewhat like the footsteps of a reptile.
The red knight’s gaze turned back and it recognized it at the same time.
Under the dim streetlights, which were nearing the end of their lifespan.
A witch stood, stepping on the blood that had not yet soaked into the ground.
An elegant witch wearing a black dress suitable for mourning.
Black hair as dark as a raven and deep green eyes.
As befitting a witch, her appearance was undeniably ‘beautiful’ by conventional standards.
However, there was a fatal flaw in her beauty.
When a line was drawn down the center of her face, only one side was grotesquely distorted.
It looked like a burn mark, as if it had been seared by fire, or like a piece of flesh melted by chemicals.
But that didn’t matter.
The fact that it hadn’t even sensed when she had entered this barrier, and that she had already caught it from behind.
The biggest problem was that she was a powerful witch that it couldn’t handle in its current state.
The red knight did not rashly think of running away and instead aimed its red branches.
It knew that it was more likely to escape by taking advantage of a gap during a confrontation than by running away clumsily and being caught from behind.
“Are you hungry?”
Undeterred by such a show of hostility, the witch spoke in a gentle voice.
The red knight’s movements stopped abruptly at the strange kindness, the intention of which it could not guess.
It was a case it had never experienced before, which hindered its ability to assess the situation.
“You must be very hungry.”
The witch took a step closer to the red knight.
The distance was within striking range, where it could land a sure hit just by extending its spear.
The opponent was showing a defenseless movement, as if she didn’t expect to be attacked at all.
With this level of carelessness, there was a chance.
The red knight’s movements, which had reflexively tried to thrust its spear and pierce her heart, creaked like a rusty machine.
Its body was stuck as if it were firmly bound.
It tried to break free using its strength, magic, and the power of the red branches, but it didn’t move at all.
The witch approached the red knight, who couldn’t move, and held out something.
It was a heart that was still wriggling vigorously, as if it had just been pulled out.
“Would you like to eat this?”
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Here is the third fan art from MentalBreakdownArtist, the villain-specialized fan artist who drew Aea and Della.
They say it’s a fan art of the Red Knight.
Is it just me, or does it look much cooler than I imagined in my head…?
This is a fan art of Siwoo in armor fighting the Red Knight (imagined).
It makes my heart swell.
Thank you so much for the amazing art!
I will treasure it in my gallery!
