Chapter 231 – #52_Training
#229
1.
Thanks to various administrative maneuvers and magical devices, the darkness, now forgotten, was buried.
In the abandoned drainage tunnel beneath Seoul, Della let out a hollow laugh.
“If they knew I’d become like this… there would be so many people who’d be happy…”
That was certainly true.
She had taken everything she wanted by any means necessary, so the resentment she had earned would be as plentiful as the things she had stolen.
They would burst into laughter at this miserable sight.
The greedy cinder witch, Della, was now just barely clinging to life like a bug, groaning in pain.
Della’s appearance was truly wretched.
Her once vibrant red hair was matted with dried blood and dust, looking like it had been covered in ashes.
Her arms and legs were densely pierced with white spears, hanging on the wall like a taxidermied insect.
She had vomited blood so many times that a foul stench and a strong smell of blood emanated from her mouth and the chest area of her dress.
Pain?
She couldn’t even feel that anymore.
Della was undoubtedly a great witch of the 20th tier.
She had plenty of combat experience, so she was confident that she could defeat most opponents without much effort.
However.
As you can see, Della had been miserably defeated by the thirty-two white knights that Paola had replicated.
The white knights, replicated from the red knights, had four ‘eyes.’
With that level of ability, even if there were 32, 100, or even more, they would not have been a match for Della.
But the white knights were different from ordinary homunculi.
Their movements were much more systematic and refined, and they hunted Della down as if they possessed high intelligence.
The biggest contributor to Della’s disadvantage was the white spears held by the white knights.
The white spears held by the white knights were linked to the distortion ability of the ‘Red Branch’ and had even replicated its unique abilities.
Thanks to that, Della had to use an excessive amount of power to deal with each one, and after burning twenty white knights, she was finally captured.
-Tap, tap, tap
A person walked into the wide hollow, echoing with each step.
The three white knights who had been standing guard, watching Della, moved aside, and the ‘Cowardly Witch,’ Paola, appeared.
In Paola’s hand was a long-necked water bottle.
“Drink.”
“……..”
“If you don’t drink, you won’t last a day.”
Della glared at Paola with sharp eyes before opening her mouth.
As she took the spout of the water bottle that was pushed to her lips, a disgustingly tasteless liquid flowed into her mouth.
This contained various medicines that restored the spirit body.
The reason Della, who was pierced all over her body with spears, had been able to survive for so long was thanks to this medicine that Paola provided every day.
Knowing this, Della had no choice but to obediently take the medicine, even though she didn’t know what Paola was planning.
“…Paola.”
After finishing all the medicine, she stopped Paola, who was turning away.
Paola turned back with indifferent eyes.
Her unblemished face was completely expressionless.
Della had been hanging on the wall of the hollow for 24 hours, watching everything Paola did.
Paola used the replicated ‘Flute of Dagon’ to massacre humans without even deploying an interdimensional barrier, collecting a large amount of magic power.
Della was also a high-tier witch.
She could tell what the magic circle engraved throughout the hollow and the Red Branch embedded in the center were for.
Therefore, she advised.
“Stop it, even now.”
“Meaningless words, as expected.”
Paola turned her back as if it wasn’t worth listening to.
“Paola!”
Della called out to Paola again with a tired, cracking voice.
At her desperate call, Paola’s eyelashes fluttered, and she faced Della again.
“You, you know what you’re trying to do, right?”
“I’m trying to secure a large amount of magic power.”
“It’s a mass slaughter.”
Seoul boasted an enormous population density.
What would happen if Paola completed her knight order and let them run wild?
Could the witches in Seoul stop them?
Before the heavy-bottomed Duke Keter moved, an unprecedented number of casualties would occur.
Even Della, who was extremely witch-like and held a sense of superiority, knew that it was wrong.
The most tragic fact was that this terrible thing would happen at the hands of her friend, Paola.
Wasn’t that why she had tried to end Paola’s life with her own hands?
“So what?”
But Paola didn’t even blink.
She was already broken.
She had known it, but she didn’t realize it was this bad…
“Even if you can revive the dead using the distortion effect, as you say, you will die at Keter’s hands. Your disciple too! Cough! Cough!”
Della, desperately shouting to persuade Paola, coughed as if her whole body was breaking.
Blood trickled from her mouth.
Paola looked at Della like that and wiped her mouth with her sleeve.
“Della, Della, foolish Della.”
Paola spoke as if singing.
It felt like a sneer, and Della turned her head away, avoiding her touch.
“……..”
“Duke Keter won’t move.”
“How do you know that…”
“The ‘Whispering Witch’ told me.”
Della’s eyes widened.
“Do you really believe that swindler?”
“I believe her, she’s more trustworthy than Della, who pretends to be a friend and then tries to stab me in the back.”
“She’s a liar. She doesn’t care what happens to you!”
“Don’t speak so loudly. It hurts my head when the sound echoes.”
Paola gently covered Della’s mouth with a gloomy expression.
Della tried to say something but gave up deep in her heart.
It was already too late if she had spoken to that female snake.
The poison that the ‘Whispering Witch’ injected was a deadly poison with no antidote.
It would have subtly seeped into every corner of Paola’s broken heart.
Now, there was no way that Della, who had once betrayed and opposed Paola, could persuade her.
“So… why are you keeping me like this? If you can’t trust me, you can just kill me.”
Her half-resigned heart even brought out words she wouldn’t normally say.
It was partly her true feelings.
Even though she didn’t want to die, being pierced by spears and hanging on the wall all day was a torment.
Since the underground had no sunlight, she couldn’t even tell how many days had passed, and she felt like her mind was slowly being ground down.
“I can’t let you go no matter how much you whine. You know all my plans, so you’ll definitely interfere.”
“…At least clean my body. I feel like I’m going to die of discomfort.”
Paola snapped her fingers.
At the same time, all the dirt on Della’s body was removed.
“You should have asked earlier. I thought you liked it that way, so I left it as it was.”
“…Is that something to say?”
Paola disappeared among the white knights without listening to Della’s complaints.
Paola suddenly stopped and spoke without turning around.
“I won’t kill you.”
Paola’s last words echoed several times in the large hollow.
“Because I still think of you as a friend.”
2.
‘You will learn how to handle the contract of the King of All Diseases in the future. But when you fight with swords and spears, there will inevitably be times when you face off in an ambiguous gap. What you need then is the art of Kwon-gak.’
With that explanation, Eloa did not let Siwoo hold any weapons.
She didn’t even allow him to create the armor he always used.
Only hand-to-hand combat with his body enhanced by magic power.
At the same time, the goal of his recent training was to increase his proficiency in explosive force.
Just like Eloa, he needed to be able to use explosive force freely in any posture.
“Hap!”
After exchanging a couple of attacks, Siwoo found an opening in Eloa’s defense.
He lowered his body to knee level and rushed in as if pouncing.
It was a tackle, a technique aimed at uprooting the opponent’s lower body from the ground.
It was called a tackle, but Siwoo was already adept at handling body enhancement through magic power.
Moreover, he also used explosive force at the moments when his power reached its peak, adjusting his strength.
It was a technique so fast that it was invisible to the naked eye of an ordinary person, and it was powerful enough to knock down an elephant.
But unfortunately, Siwoo’s tackle did not bring Eloa to the ground.
“Kuh!”
Eloa, who had slightly dodged like a matador, slipped her leg between Siwoo’s legs.
Siwoo, who had completely lost his balance due to the foot sweep that had come at a perfect timing.
Tiphereth, who grabbed the back of Siwoo’s neck as he was about to fall forward, easily slammed him to the ground.
To be precise, she slightly lifted him up at the moment his back was about to touch the ground, reducing the impact, but…
-Bang!
That alone caused a crack in the cement.
This was his 50th takedown.
Eloa clicked her tongue.
“How can you be useful if you charge in like an angry boar? Your movements are too big and there’s too much unnecessary motion.”
“Haa, haa, isn’t calling me a boar a bit much?”
Siwoo rubbed the back of his head and raised his upper body.
“You only look ahead, charge in with a bang, and fall on your own. You’re just like a boar. Isn’t that right?”
When Eloa’s teasing came back, Siwoo scratched his head.
Had they become closer through repeated training and sparring?
Eloa often spoke to Siwoo in a teasing manner.
Thanks to her relaxed attitude, Siwoo also sometimes grumbled and complained.
“A little while ago, you told me not to be timid and to move big and powerfully.”
“That didn’t mean a charge full of openings. I also taught you that power doesn’t only come from making big movements, didn’t I?”
“This is… difficult.”
“The only easy thing in the world is lying down during training. Here, get up.”
Eloa reached out her hand, and Siwoo grabbed it and stood up straight.
A month had passed since the start of training, and autumn had fully arrived.
Compared to when he was easily knocked down by each of Eloa’s moves, he had made great progress, but he didn’t seem to be making any more progress.
Well, she was a veteran warrior who had gone through countless real battles, so it might be shameless to try to catch up with her after only a few days of training.
“Are you still going to do more?”
“Yes, it feels a bit disappointing to end it like this.”
Siwoo felt a huge wall in front of Eloa.
A wall so thick that he couldn’t overcome it.
But that didn’t immediately lead to despair or giving up.
That wasn’t in his nature.
Just trying to climb a high wall created achievement.
Siwoo knew that if he replaced the time for despair with effort and concentration, he wouldn’t be wasting his time.
And when a purpose for learning arose, Siwoo’s concentration never wavered.
After sparring like this, he would go home and spend time watching UFC matches.
The technique that Eloa called a boar tackle was actually an application of something he had seen in a match yesterday.
“The desire to improve is always good. If you don’t settle for your current position and keep striving, you will surely get results.”
Eloa hardly showed it, but she looked at Siwoo as if she was proud of him.
She had known that he was an extraordinary person with patience.
But she had never imagined that he was a person with so much stubbornness and perseverance that he would keep charging even after being beaten for more than 10 hours a day.
It was a prejudice, but Siwoo’s appearance was closer to that of a scholar.
“I have something to tell you about your previous attack.”
“Ah, yes.”
Eloa straightened her slightly disheveled windbreaker and put her hands behind her back.
“Do you know when the most dangerous moment in battle is?”
“Are you talking about magical combat? Or are you talking about the physical combat we’re doing?”
“I’m talking about both.”
When Siwoo didn’t answer for a while, Eloa opened her mouth.
“It’s the moment you attack.”
“The attack?”
“Your vision narrows, and your mind is filled with only one thought. If you only think about offense, there will inevitably be openings. So…”
Eloa put her hands on her waist and pointed her finger.
“Always keep this in mind during battle. Look wide, and look deep.”
In fact, the training with Duke Tiphereth had a slightly Zen-like aspect.
What she taught was closer to a spiritual theory than a formula for using the body.
“Could you teach me in a little more detail? For example, tell me to take this posture, or that attacking in this way will reduce openings.”
“It’s not good to create a frame and force things into it. The most natural thing is the best thing. Like flowing water. All I can do is help you not divert the water flow to an uphill path. The rest is up to you.”
“I understand. I’ll try my best.”
It was still like an enigmatic riddle.
But he didn’t doubt her.
Siwoo knew better than anyone that his skills were improving day by day.
“Then I’ll go again.”
“Come.”
Looking at Siwoo, who was burning with fighting spirit again, Eloa smiled slightly.
=======
This is Eloa Tiphereth drawn by PCHN
I really like the way she’s wearing a windbreaker and training clothes, and the colors!
Personally, I really like the colors that look like they’ve been painted with colored pencils, and it fits my taste perfectly!
Especially her exhausted eyes are really artistic…
Thank you so much for the great fan art!!
