City ​​of Witches 259

Chapter 259 – #58_All Darkness Comes From The East (5)

#257
1.
An immeasurable amount of time had passed.
The darkness, where not a single ray of light penetrated, first broke Della’s biological clock.
She couldn’t properly distinguish when to sleep, when to wake up, or even how much time had passed.

Well, even if her biological clock had been normal, she wouldn’t have been able to sleep in this state.
The white spears that densely pierced Della’s body had, at some point, healed while still piercing her tender flesh, becoming like a part of her body.

She couldn’t even laugh.
She prided herself on having a strong mental fortitude, enough to not be shaken by most things.
But being fixed to the wall like an insect specimen and being forced to watch the gruesome events unfolding before her eyes was quite nauseating.

-Woo-oo-oo-oo!

Especially that sound.
The huge vibrating sound that echoed through the underground chamber pierced her ears.
Listening to that terrible sound echoing from the depths of hell made her want to gouge out her eardrums.

“……”

Della weakly lifted her head, which had been drooping.
Her complexion was haggard, like that of a patient nearing death.
Even though she was a spirit, the accumulated stress and pain in her body had already exceeded the threshold.
At this rate, she might go insane.
Della suppressed the urge to curse and stared at the bizarre object in the middle of the underground chamber, which was emitting a loud noise.

It resembled a lotus flower that had not fully bloomed.
It was tens of meters in height and circumference.
A huge bud, layered and waiting for the time to sprout.
All of its petals were made of human arm bones, interlocked as if in prayer.

Even Della, whose moral and ethical standards were infinitely low, couldn’t help but feel disgusted by the grotesqueness of this artwork.
The stem supporting the flower was made of tangled red threads, like a rope.
What looked like a messy bundle of wires was actually the human central nervous system.

Under the stem, which still seemed to be alive and slowly wriggling, white and hazy grayish-white flesh was intertwined like fish entrails.

The brain mass, which was hard to describe with the singular term, looked like a ball of clay, submerged under the cerebrospinal fluid and blood on the floor, supporting the stem and bud of the lotus like roots.

A flower made of bones, a stem made of nerve bundles, and roots made of brains…
The identity of this lotus, which seemed like something out of a trashy B-grade gore movie, was an altar.

A giant altar made of human bones, brains, and nerve bundles.
It was also a compact version of the collective art of the masses, transformed to only have the function of praying, wishing, and yearning in place of Paola’s desires.

The humans caught in that artwork would pray for Paola until their synapses and nerves burned out from overload.
No, it was questionable whether to even call them ‘humans’ anymore, as they had already lost everything they needed to be considered human.

-Ooo-oo-oo-oo!

The vibrating sound, as if countless dead were screaming at once, echoed loudly again.
Another arm bone unfolded outward, as if a petal was sprouting.
At the very center of the lotus was the ‘Red Branch’.
It was the artifact of the Red Knight, possessing the characteristic of ‘distortion’.

Della knew its power well.
The White Knights, who were replicas of the Red Knight, and the white spears they wielded, even though they were mere replicas, resonated with the Red Branch and interfered with the workings of magic.

But what Paola was aiming for was not simply to enhance the combat capabilities of the Red Branch.
She was focusing on the concept of ‘distortion’ possessed by the Red Branch, pushing it to the extreme, and controlling it in the direction she wanted.
Not distorting space or magic fields, but ultimately distorting the natural order and reality.
In other words, her goal was to make the fact that Paola’s apprentice witch had died ‘as if it never happened’.

“Kuh…!”

Della was not the only one forced to be an audience to this disgusting performance.
The knight order created by collecting the hearts of ‘1200’ victims from the previous attack using Dagon’s flute.

And one of the four witches who survived after being hunted down using all available combat-type homunculi was also watching the artwork that would bring about an unprecedented disaster.

-Ooo-oo-oo-oo!

Paola Sochtl, who was kneeling and praying quietly under the lotus.
Her madness and will to throw everything away for the sake of a single wish were chillingly pure.
Even in this terrible scene, she looked like a saint at first glance.

-Thwack!

Paola rose from her spot.
She didn’t care at all that her clothes were stained with cerebrospinal fluid and blood as she approached a witch hanging on the wall.
The Red Knight, who had been protecting Paola, followed behind her with a thwacking sound.

“Hic… hic… eek…!”

How pitiful.
Judging by her face, she was a young witch who hadn’t been a witch for long.

The gaze that had been full of the recognition of being a chosen being pursuing the ultimate secret, and the resulting inflated self-awareness and pride, was now no different from that of a frightened little girl.
It was understandable, considering the terrible things she had experienced.

“P-please, save me… please save me….”

The blonde witch, crying and sniffling, was looked at by Paola with emotionless eyes.
It was a gaze as inorganic and dry as an insect’s.

“I’ll do anything, anything… please have mercy….”

The witch trembled as if her body would break.
If she hadn’t been pierced by the spear, she probably would have clung to Paola’s feet and begged.
She might have even licked her shoes.
To the frail witch, trembling with fear, Paola spoke in a surprisingly kind tone.

“Don’t worry.”

In front of the young witch, whose expression was about to brighten with a tiny bit of hope, she took out a sharp blade made of obsidian.

“It won’t hurt that much.”
“W-wait… just a moment… kehk… heuk… kyaaaaak…!”

Soon, a loud, shrill scream echoed.
The sound of flesh being cut, the sound of the belly being opened and the uterus being removed.
All of it was buried in that scream.

-Ooo-oo-oo-oo

“……”

The scream suddenly cut off like a radio that had been turned off.
In Paola’s hand was a red lump of flesh.
A fresh lump of flesh, full of the witch’s mark and magic.
Paola held the uterus, dripping with blood, carefully in both hands and walked towards the lotus with a reverent gait.

“I offer this.”

As she knelt and offered the sacrifice, countless skeletal arms received the lump of flesh.

-Ooo
-Ooo-oo
-Ooo-oo-oo

More petals than ever before bloomed all at once.
The White Knights surrounding the chamber on all sides began to strike the floor with their spears in unison.
The white spears, resonating with the Red Branch, wailed, and amidst the commotion, Paola prayed again.

The opportunity was now.
Amidst the frenzied roar reminiscent of a demonic ritual, Della gathered her magic.
Perhaps feeling that the progress of the ritual was not fast enough with human magic alone, Paola offered the witch’s mark as an additional sacrifice.

Each time, the lotus bloomed at a noticeably faster rate.
And each time, everyone, including the White Knights, focused solely on controlling the ritual.
In other words, this was the only chance to escape, using the magic she had barely managed to gather until now.

-Thud! Thud! Thud!

Della didn’t care that her wounds were opening as she forcefully pulled out the spear that had pierced her arm.
A terrible pain that made her head go white.
Even as she felt the flesh and muscles that had become one with the white spear being torn apart, she pulled out each spear from her body one by one.

“Kuh… kkeueuk…!”

With each spear she pulled out, she felt like she was losing consciousness.
After barely pulling out a total of 12 spears, Della crawled out through the gaps between the White Knights, who were pounding their spears like excited fanatics.

There wasn’t much time.
According to the data she had accumulated by observing the three witches being sacrificed so far, the White Knights would return to a state of ironclad vigilance in about 5 minutes.

“Keuh… keheok….”

She had to stop them.
She had to let them know.
Paola’s plan was not over yet.
Even if she bloomed the lotus and drew out the full potential of the Red Branch, she would still need much more magic to carry out the resurrection ritual.

In other words, she was planning to deploy all 1200 White Knights and the Red Knight at once to carry out a massacre.
Just like how she had used Dagon’s flute to kill civilians indiscriminately.
How many would die?
10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000?
Perhaps even more victims than the Plague Witch would be created.

“Keuh… keuh….”

Della, who had barely managed to escape the chamber and crawl to a large tunnel, realized that she couldn’t hold on like this.
The bleeding was too severe because she had forcefully removed the spears that were blocking the wounds.
She would either die from excessive bleeding or faint.
Either way, she wouldn’t be able to escape consciousness.

“Hoo… hoo…”

Della gasped for breath and raised one finger.
The only thing supporting her tattered body was a handful of magic, so she couldn’t use wasteful magic like healing magic.
Della rolled up her sleeve, bit it, and cauterized her wounds with the flames from her fingertip.

“……!!!!!”

Pain that felt like death.
The smell of burning flesh and skin as it was seared and shrunk.
Blood gushed from Della’s tightly clenched gums from the pain that would have caused a human to go into shock.

Della, who had controlled the bleeding with a crude and violent method, barely managed to stand up, using the crumbling walls of the rain tunnel as support.
She dragged her tattered body as if she were dragging her feet.

But there was no time to relax.

-Clank clank clank

The sound of footsteps coming from afar was heading this way.
Probably from a White Knight who had been stationed and not participating in the ritual.

She couldn’t get caught.
Even when Della’s body was in perfect condition, she could only kill 20 White Knights at most.
The white spears, resonating with the Red Branch’s distortion ability, were no exaggeration to call them anti-witch weapons designed to kill witches.

Even if she escaped from here and revealed all the conspiracies, would there be a way to deal with that knight order?
Unless it was a witch who could wield powerful physical attacks like Tiferet or Ea Sadalmelik, they wouldn’t be able to withstand it…
But such leisurely thoughts could wait until she had completely escaped.

“Damn it… cough! Cough!”

Using inappropriate vulgar language, Della began to run, supporting her creaking body with magic.
Every step she took sent a crushing pain throughout her body.

-Clankclankclankclank

She couldn’t get caught again here.
Della, who had squeezed out her last bit of strength, saw a light shining vertically in the distance.
It was the escape route she had kept an eye on when she first came to meet Paola, in case of an emergency.

“Burn…!”

Della did her best to create wings of fire.
This place was 45 meters underground.
In this condition, it was impossible to climb up a ladder.
She had to fly up in one go.
Della’s body, adorned with large wings like a phoenix, rose in an instant and even shattered the large steel cover.

“Ugh…!”

Her consciousness almost faded again in the process of pushing open the iron door, but she had managed to get out.
The refreshing air she hadn’t smelled in a long time pleasantly tickled her lungs.

“Hoo… hoo… First, I need to go to the location point…”

She had to tell them everything.
She would receive protection and treatment there.
With that goal in mind, Della ran out of the alleyway.

-Screeeech!

A white light came into view.
A sports car with a bizarre grill like a horseshoe belatedly slammed on the brakes.

-Thud!

It was impossible to stop Della’s body from flying up like a piece of paper.