City ​​of Witches 218

Chapter 218 – #49_회고(2)

#216

1.
A scene that easily comes to mind when you say ‘Arctic’.
Amelia stepped onto the snowfield, where a blindingly white snowscape stretched out without any distinction between front and back.

Amelia still couldn’t believe that this solid, endlessly spreading ground was actually a huge chunk of ice slowly floating on the sea.

The wind that whipped and tore at her skin all day long.
The sky, robbed of the sun, submerged in twilight for days on end.
Observing the life that sprouted and lived in such barrenness.
It was all a first for her.

Amelia, walking on the frozen snow with a travel bag in one hand and the hit list given to her by Keter in the other, suddenly stopped.

Looking for a homunculus hidden in a pocket dimension in a snowfield where the horizon is visible no matter where you look is like finding a needle in a haystack.
The location written on the hit list was literally just ‘roughly where the homunculus is located’.

Her fingertips trembled.
Her body was telling her that she needed to rest.
An ethereal body does not need sleep or food.
The biting cold can also be dealt with to some extent with magic.
But it’s not like some kind of infinite power generator in her imagination.
Without a map in her hand, she had been repeating the process of tracking the homunculus without a moment’s rest.
It was only natural that her body was strained.

“……..”

But Amelia was not afraid.
She didn’t get discouraged or complain.
Having already lost everything, the question of why she had to do this kind of thing was long gone.
She just repeated the given task like a machine.

“Weep.”

As Amelia’s lips moved, a wave of magical power spread throughout the area.
Responding to her call, countless tiny particles became Amelia’s senses and began to scatter in all directions.
The particles that dyed the pitch-black polar night in full color were certainly a spectacle, but Amelia only looked at them with indifferent eyes.

To question, to feel, to have a heart is only painful.
So, she exposes her heart to the harsh wind.
If she freezes her heart and lets it necrotize until it turns a dark bluish-purple, she won’t feel pain or loneliness.

The thing Amelia was most confident in and had done for the longest time.
Defining duty and responsibility and burying herself without projecting emotions.
She just repeated that.

The particles that had spread out around Amelia returned to her faster than they had scattered.
The sight was like a beautiful constellation that followed its own orbit according to the laws of the celestial bodies, even without anyone telling it to.
Amelia’s sky-blue eyes opened drowsily.

-Kugung! Kugugugung!

A vibration rang out.
An otherworldy barrier was deployed, and cracks appeared on the ice of the Arctic Ocean, which had never melted or broken.

Amelia was not flustered.
This task that she had been repeating for days was not strictly to find the homunculus.
It was to let the homunculus, who had gone into hibernation by hiding in the polar region, know of the witch’s presence.
It was an invitation to let them know that a delicious witch was here.
And the homunculus responded to Amelia’s invitation.

-Kuoohhhhh!!!!

The homunculus, who appeared with a roar to devour the witch and protect the legacy as it was imprinted in its instincts.

Its appearance resembled a whale.
After heading to the mortal realm, Amelia had also seen whales flipping their white bellies and creating splashes of water when she walked near the sea.
She also remembered their large size and majesty, which were hard to believe were living things.

However, the monster that appeared before Amelia’s eyes now could not be simply described as ‘resembling a whale’.
The streamlined body, short neck, thick tail that was almost the same size as the body, pectoral fins that stretched out to the left and right like wings, and the white whiskers that stretched from its mouth to its chest were not that different.

But the size of the body that slowly floated in the air.
Just in terms of length, was it 900m, or maybe 1000m?
The ultra-low-frequency roar that it emitted from its huge body, which seemed to move the scenery just by lightly twisting its body, became a shockwave in itself and blew all the frozen snowflakes into the sky.

It didn’t end there.
The huge whale with 12 pairs of eyes next to its blunt head was carrying the wreckage of a broken warship as if it were on its back.

The first page of the hit list described this strange being.
A living calamity that had been swimming in the deep sea for 300 years, sinking hundreds of warships and making them its own weapons.
The King of the Abyss, Dagon.

-Kuoohhhhhhhh!!!!

The roar that the whale let out once again swept past Amelia.
The smell of fish from the deep sea mixed with the smell of sticky petroleum split and cracked the ice.
It was a shockwave that would have caused the internal organs of a normal human to rupture and die instantly, but Amelia’s expression did not change at all.

It was the first time she had faced a homunculus.
Even though a battle that could take her life was waiting for her, Amelia was surprised to find that she had no thoughts at all.

If her life ends because of a lack of ability, then so be it.
There was nothing to lose in the first place.
The warmth that had filled both her hands had already been lost twice by mistake.

-Kiiiiiiiiing

Only after feeling the magic intertwining and gathering on her skin did Amelia shake off her thoughts.
The magic began to be sucked into the hundreds of main guns mounted on Dagon’s body.

The overwhelming magic output and reflected light emanating from the huge body awakened the pitch-black Arctic night.
The sky became as bright as if the sun had risen, and a main gun of overwhelming thickness was fired at Amelia.

-Kwa-gwa-gwa-gwa-gwang!!!

No matter how much the main gun of a warship was, it would be useless against a witch of a certain rank or higher.
But the warship that it had attached to its body after sinking it was already part of Dagon.
It was a threatening attack that was a threat to witches, and had actually killed three witches.

A huge explosion engulfed Amelia’s small body.
The intense bombardment, which was concentrated, compressed, and could not be stopped by any technology in the world, did not stop there and shattered the huge glacier like a cookie.

The water vapor, which had turned from solid to gas due to the overwhelming heat, froze in the extremely low temperature climate.
A bluish light flowed out from the artificially created diamond dust.
There, Amelia was unharmed.
The place where she stood had already changed so much that the map had changed, but Amelia’s clothes were not even ruffled.

Beyond the realm of the 15th rank where the magic of the mark and instinct are united, beyond the realm of the 20th rank great witch who even twists the order and laws.
The 23rd rank, which has been reached by less than 10 witches in all of history.
Even if a witch who has reached that level has no combat experience, her very existence overwhelms everything beneath her feet.

-Kuuuooo!!!

Dagon twisted its body again.
It was the first time in its 300 years of existence that a witch had revealed herself so calmly after receiving this attack.
But if it repeated it, it would be enough to pour out the bombardment until it could no longer be blocked.
The beast swimming in the sky gathered magic once again and initiated a simultaneous bombardment.

In the midst of the bombardment of magic cannons that rushed towards Amelia like a meteor shower.
In the storm of destruction that was no less than a natural disaster.

“Weep.”

Amelia just murmured.
A white breath rose from her lips.

Silence fell.
Hundreds and thousands of magic cannons stopped as if time had stopped.

Filling the entire range of her vision were Amelia’s ‘particles’, the number of which was meaningless to count.
Her self-magnetic magic, which had transcended its limits by killing Ea Sadalmelik, was able to take control of all the magic in the surrounding area.
The magic cannons that had stopped in mid-air gradually weakened their cohesion and soon scattered into the air.
The magic that had scattered in this way was once again converted into Amelia’s particles and became her power.

-Kuuuooooooo!!!!

The huge whale, flustered by the inexplicable phenomenon, let out a strange cry.
But the beast had no way of understanding how this situation had occurred.
It could only try to make a last-ditch effort by firing magic cannons repeatedly.

And.
-Shoo-shoo-shoo

Nothing hit properly.
Even if it poured out magic cannons that were comparable to bunker busters with each shot, if they stopped and disappeared in the middle and did not reach the target, it was a meaningless attack.

Amelia flicked her fingertips.
With the scent of flowers spreading thickly, the huge whale that had been swimming leisurely in the air lost its buoyancy and fell.
Amelia’s particles had already begun to penetrate every corner of Dagon’s body.

-Kugugugugung!!!

Dagon, who had fallen without being able to do anything, split the glacier in half and collapsed.
The earth-shaking roar and the hazy snow that scattered seemed to be the result of an island falling from the sky.

Amelia moved her feet.
Wildflowers that do not bloom in the polar region bloomed with every step she took.
But a bunch of flowers had no color.
A flower path woven only in achromatic colors, as if all the colors had been taken away by a curse, spread out like a carpet along Amelia’s heels.

She didn’t walk far before reaching Dagon’s head.
If a body with that much weight had fallen freely from hundreds of meters in the air, it would have been a fatal injury.
Perhaps because of that, black blood like petroleum was dripping from its open mouth.

-Kuu… Kuu….

It was too late to try to make a last-ditch effort now.
Amelia infiltrated particles into Dagon’s open mouth and skin before it could even notice.
Since the homunculus was moving with magic, it was no different from inhaling a lot of colorless and odorless poison gas.

“……..”

Amelia stared at its eyes.
The shiny eyes, each of which was much larger than her body, rolled their pupils at Amelia.

She would soon take its life.
If the particles spread sufficiently throughout its body, she would bloom flowers and destroy it.

She didn’t feel any particular emotion.
If Amelia hadn’t killed it, she would have been killed.
It would have been her lying there like that.
She had no guilt about that fact itself.

Amelia suddenly recalled a deceased person in a fairy tale that her teacher had read to her a long time ago.
A pitiful soul wandering around the netherworld with a rotting body, having lost the meaning and reason to live.
Yes.
This life was no different from that.

She couldn’t deny that the sight of the beast, wounded and waiting for the moment of death, overlapped with her own.
Amelia reached out her hand over the whale’s huge snout.

“….You’re just like me.”

The wave of magic that spread from her hand bloomed the particles that had penetrated every part of Dagon’s body.
The flowers that began to bloom like waves from its snout to its tail certainly took its life.
A collapsing body.
Leaving behind the scattering achromatic petals, Amelia turned the next page of the hit list.