City ​​of Witches 354

Chapter 354 – #77_Tutor(4)

#352

1.
It wasn’t that I had no worries at all.
But they were minor concerns.
It was Diana who had urged me to come first and set up the position board when I was working at the host bar.
Even when Count Yesod had hinted that Diana was quite lazy, I figured I could get her to play a game with me.

A shallow trick, I thought, to stimulate her competitive spirit and get her to do things in exchange for a match.
In fact, I had been able to control the twin apprentice witches, who were also witches, with a similar method, so why would this be any different?

But the way Diana acted was like an iron wall.
She showed no interest in Siwoo and was only busy trying to run away.

I was secretly taken aback.
It was as if my only plan had gone awry.

“Who’s scared? Ha…! Huh…! Seriously…! I’m speechless….”

The last method, which seemed to cross the line slightly, seemed to have worked immediately on Diana.
Diana, who looked like she was about to turn her back on Siwoo and go into her room, scurried over and sat at the living room table.

She brought out the position board and, grumbling, finished setting it up faster than the speed of light.
At this moment, her nickname, ‘Lazy Diana,’ was meaningless.

Having finished the preparations in the blink of an eye, Diana glared at Siwoo with eyes that shone with hostility.

“You.”
“Yes.”
“You’re prepared, right?”
“Prepared for what?”

An aura was already surging behind Diana.
A rare item that could only be completed by someone who was annoyed to death but kept being chased, and who had to endure an overbearing provocation.
It was an aura of anger.

“You provoked me. And with the absurd slander that I was running away.”

Her voice was still soft, but she spoke very quickly, as if whispering, and became very talkative.

“I wanted to sleep. I wanted to lie my head on a warm, fluffy feather pillow and roll around in my comfortable pajamas. No, actually, everything was distorted because of you.
My original plan was to wrap myself in a blanket and sleep in a sunny spot.
I won’t be able to do that when the full winter comes soon.
In other words, everything was ruined because of you, and you made me sit here with a silly provocation that would immediately tarnish my reputation if I ignored it.”

Could you believe that she had digested so many words and sentences in one breath?
It was a volume of dialogue that seemed like exercise just by saying it.

“If you lose to me, don’t even think about going back nicely. You’ll get the punishment you deserve….”

Diana, who had been so heated, suddenly stopped talking like a broken radio.
Here is Diana’s train of thought.

I’ll give you the punishment you deserve.
Punishment?
A slap on the hand?
The perverted delivery man.
Tickling with feathers.
The delivery man presses down on the witch’s body, writhing in tickles and pleasure, with his hard penis….

“Ah, ah, ah, anyway…!”

Siwoo looked at Diana with a puzzled expression as she poured out all sorts of words like a burst dam and then suddenly turned red in the face.
Diana couldn’t even look him in the face properly and had to mumble the rest of her words.

“Anyway, come at me. I’ll crush your nose.”
“Understood.”

Seeing Siwoo smile, Diana bit her lip.
Why did that scene have to come to mind there….
She couldn’t even say everything she wanted to say properly.

Come to think of it, her last match with him hadn’t been properly concluded.
When she had studied with a vengeance and gone back, she had lost because the twin apprentice witches of the Jemanae family had attacked her mentally.
And when she tried to challenge him again, she had run away at the sight of the three of them kissing so casually.

Let’s think positively that at least this rematch has been arranged.
Diana calmed her boiling heart, as if cold water had been poured on hot oil, and took a deep breath.

“It’s been a while since we played a game together.”

That annoying man who was grinning was, one way or another, a tutor hired by her beloved and respected mother.
She was being a little lenient because he was so absurd.

She had threatened to tell her mother to fire him tomorrow, but she was going to leave him alone if he kept within the bounds of decency.
But the other party had crossed the line first, and now that she had a reason, Diana couldn’t help but say something.

“Hey.”
“Yes.”
“If I win, you will resign without saying a word. From that ridiculous position of tutor or whatever.”
“Well, that’s difficult…. To be honest, I received a promise of research cooperation in exchange for becoming Diana’s tutor. If I get kicked out in a day, I won’t be able to get any help.”

For the first time, a troubled look appeared on his face, which had been following her around with a brazen face.
She had thought he had only come to earn a few pennies from the Yesod family, but it turned out he was doing magic research.
Still, he seemed to have some witch-like qualities.

But it didn’t matter.
The troubles that came to someone she didn’t like were rather a pleasure for Diana.
She gave him a counter-provocation.

“Ha…! You’re scared?”
“I can’t predict victory if Diana is my opponent.”
“You also bothered me for 30 minutes, chasing me around when I said I didn’t want to. Don’t even think about changing the conditions.”

And so, the duel began.
Diana habitually occupied three magic power sources.
As with most abstract strategy games, the first move is usually uneventful.
Except for that man.

“What is this….”

Diana’s eyes narrowed at the sight of Siwoo’s magic power source placement.
No matter how unique a tactic was, you would get a feel for it after facing it a few times.
In fact, in the last game where she had narrowly conceded victory to him, Diana had been in the lead until the twins had interfered.

“He’s doing something strange again.”

But Siwoo’s magic power source now was completely different from before.
But that didn’t mean it was orthodox either.
It formed an equilateral triangle, but it was very far apart.
It was spread out widely, as if staking out the prime real estate, in stark contrast to when they were clustered together.

Diana felt a strange sense of unease, added to the unfamiliarity of the strategy she was seeing for the first time and the memory of being swayed by his unpredictable play in the past.
She spoke through gritted teeth, as if to shake off that unease.

“I’m not falling for such clumsy tricks anymore.”
“Clumsy? This is a strategy I’ve carefully prepared.”

The opponent was a one-trick pony with surprise strategies.
He was just a beginner who thought that a novel strategy must be a great strategy, with a little bit of skill added to it.
Diana calmed her anxiety and thought carefully.

Clustering magic power sources is inefficient for expanding magic formulas.
But if it was just inefficient, Diana would not have lost to the same strategy.
The momentary one or two timings that come from concentrated magic power sources, the ability to break through at one point.
If there were any advantages, that would be it.

But what was that?
It was a distance where they could barely resonate with each other, but the magic power source itself had reduced defense and output.
No matter how hard she looked, there were no advantages.

But Diana was not careless.
She had already experienced his play style based on bizarre strategies.
If she didn’t panic or get carried away and dealt with it carefully….

This time, she could repay the humiliation of defeat and get rid of this annoying man in front of her.

And it wasn’t long before Diana was able to grasp his intentions.

“Kuh…!”

As always, Diana’s style was orthodox itself.
She preferred textbook plays, where she would secure useful runes through small-scale skirmishes, solidify the inner workings of her magic formula, and then crush her opponents with a natural power struggle.
In short, she was good at ‘games you don’t lose’, or, to put it a little more, ‘games you don’t lose if you know them’.

In contrast, the strategy that this man had prepared today was a chaotic battle.
It was a hectic guerrilla war.
It was about engaging in hectic checks and small-scale battles that came from the magic power sources placed all around.
Unless the magic power sources were concentrated, the pushing power itself was weak, but instead, it allowed for much more chaotic and messy checks.

And this was a strategy that stimulated Diana’s trauma and was very challenging.

The 5th game she had played against this man before.
Back then, they had also exchanged hectic, chaotic blows like this.
If you only looked at the results of the mid-game, the outcome was clear.

After the breathless speed battle where they were grabbing each other by the hair and shaking each other, she had come to her senses and naturally lost the game.
But from that moment on, Siwoo had thrown a stone and conceded victory to Diana.

A victory that could never be called a victory.
A victory with humiliation and arrogance written all over it.
The past where she had accepted it happily and jumped for joy had become the driving force that had made Diana devote herself to studying magic with a vengeance.

“If you were trying to defeat me with the same trick…. I’ll call it arrogance.”
“Surely not.”

Diana’s eyes gleamed.
She couldn’t forget the humiliation she had felt when she realized it was a rigged game while reviewing it alone.
Diana had studied intensively in preparation for the event of a chaotic battle more than any other case.

After that, a fierce battle unfolded.
The level of the game was far higher than before Diana had studied.
The intensity of the battles that took place in the small-scale battlefields.
The number of battlefields itself was easily two or three times more.

Before she knew it, Diana had forgotten to speak and was immersed in the match.
At this moment, there was no anger, no annoyance, and no perverted delivery man in her head.

A battle of pure thinking and calculation.
She was just repeating the number game in this dodecahedral battlefield where all sorts of traps and bluffs were rampant.

After exchanging about 100 moves without saying a word to each other or even making eye contact, Diana’s concentration broke.

“Ah….”

A sigh escaped her lips without her realizing it.
He was strong.
It was frustrating, but she had to admit it again.
This man had an outstanding brain that was by no means inferior to Diana’s.
Of course, it was Diana herself who would win.

“I won.”

A total of 27 skirmishes had taken place, and Diana had won the skirmishes by a narrow margin.
It was a close margin of half a point in Go, but Diana had occupied 25 of the 27 runes.
If that was the case, there was no need for any more chaotic battles.

“I acknowledge your skills. I mean it.”

Now that she had occupied so many runes, there was no need to engage in the battles that the opponent was initiating.
Like a bull that runs even with a spear in its back, all she had to do was destroy the magic power sources.

“I always feel this, but.”

The low voice that came at the moment when Diana had mentally confirmed her victory.
For some reason, that voice had a slight smile in it.

“I think you need to look at the bigger picture a little more, Diana.”

-Clack!

And a move that would turn the entire situation on the board was played.
A divine move that Diana would never have thought of.
A move that was completely out of the ordinary.

“Ah….”

It was finally visible.
The final puzzle that he had been preparing, even in the midst of that fierce chaotic battle, was being completed.

With that one move, the two runes he had occupied shone.
With that one move, the shining runes formed the shape of a sharp dagger.
With that one move, a magic path was connected to the dagger-shaped form.
With that one move, the discarded moves that had been scattered meaninglessly became a single guiding tunnel.
With that one move, the dagger that had flown shattered all of Diana’s magic power sources that had been exhausted after the fierce battle.

Like dominoes that had been stacked perfectly without a single gap, Diana was defeated in an instant by the chain reaction of magic that had been completed all at once.

“…….”

She couldn’t understand.

Why she had lost.
It took her a long time to understand how she had lost.
When had he been drawing this big picture?

Was it because she had felt awe at his overwhelming talent and its results?
Diana realized that she had goosebumps on her arms.

It was a feeling of being submerged in the shadow cast by a huge wall of talent that she had never felt before in her life.

“Then, um…. You’ll let me off the hook for telling the Count to fire you?”

The first male witch in the history of witches, who was asking for a favor with her hands together while making what she thought was a cute expression.

His name was Shin Siwoo.
She wanted to know more about him.