Chapter 396 – #85_무도회(3)
#394
1.
The moment the fight began, Siwoo once again measured the vast gap between the two.
First, Siwoo’s armaments.
Three four-leaf clovers from Cybele Periwinkle.
Extra lifelines that could evade death up to three times.
A protective cloak created by Flora Arabesque.
He hadn’t even had a chance to test how much it could defend.
However, if it was a ‘ceremonial dress’ made by a Great Witch of the 22nd tier, it would be incomparable to a prototype.
Lastly, the Red Branch, with its functions controlled to about 25%.
It could only be used to control the distortion field, and it was impossible to even handle its unique, free-spirited barrier.
Nevertheless, Siwoo was betting his only chance of winning on the Red Branch.
During his research with Count Yesod, he had examined a broken music box.
Even though it had gimmicks to deal with various contamination situations, as it was a top-tier artifact, its circuits were burned black.
It had been affected by a very faint distortion field that had pierced through the ribbon.
Bianca Bellili’s magnetic magic was about magnetizing various magical tools.
If her abilities were focused on magical tools, it was a trump card that could find a unique way out.
The distance between them was about 100 meters.
It was a distance that Siwoo could close in the blink of an eye, but Bianca was already holding a pistol in her hand.
Her composure, not even batting an eye at the sudden rush, showed the experience of a hunter.
The dark gray pistol in Bianca’s hand was an extremely ordinary 9mm automatic pistol, a K5.
It was far from being an artifact.
But Siwoo, with his eyepatch removed, could see it.
The moment a hazy magical power seeped into the pistol and Bianca’s finger touched the trigger, something changed.
“Bang.”
His dynamic vision, far surpassing human limits, perceived the series of events in slow motion.
However, the bullet, drawing a straight line in the stretched time, was like a ray of light traversing a moment.
“Hup!”
It was impossible to dodge or block it left or right.
Siwoo, as if doing a pole vault, planted the spear blade on the ground as he rushed forward and jumped upwards.
-Clang!
The bullet, barely grazing the tip of his armor, easily crumpled a huge iron pillar and created a roar.
It was too early to relax.
His body was still in the air, and as far as Siwoo knew, the K5 was an automatic pistol capable of continuous fire.
-Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Bianca, pulling the trigger of a pistol with the firepower of a tank’s main gun, didn’t even show a sign of feeling the recoil.
Producing such destructive power with a mass-produced pistol, yet causing no burden to the user.
It was truly an absurd enhancement ability.
-Shriiiik!
He read the trajectory the muzzle was aiming at.
Hanging from the eight ribbons that supported his body like spider legs, he dodged the shots like an acrobat and threw his body towards Bianca.
No matter how powerful a witch was, she wouldn’t be unscathed if stabbed by a spear blade emitting a distortion field.
“Can I give you a piece of advice? I hate men who come on too strong.”
When the distance between the two had narrowed to about 30 meters.
Bianca raised her hand as if to show off.
In her hand was a detonator that looked like a crude old-fashioned cell phone.
The two wires connected below were each connected to the corners of the cargo hold.
M18A1.
The detonator of an anti-personnel fragmentation mine, commonly known as a Claymore.
Siwoo’s reaction was swift.
Before he could even realize what the object in Bianca’s hand was, he used his cloak to cover his entire body.
He lowered his head to prepare for the impact.
At the same time, he covered the back of his neck with the gauntlet that wasn’t holding the spear.
-Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwang!
The black armor was made of shadows with weak physical responsiveness, but it was an object that had maximized hardness and shock absorption by utilizing the elements of earth and fire.
Originally, the explosion of about 700g of C4 and the scattering of steel balls wouldn’t pierce Siwoo’s black armor.
However, this Claymore was enhanced by Bianca’s magical power.
The shockwaves of tens of kilometers per second that swept in from the left and right, and the momentum of the silver steel shower, stopped Siwoo’s movement in mid-air.
At the same time, his mind became hazy from the fierce impact that felt like being beaten all over with a baseball bat.
There wasn’t even a moment to scream.
As soon as the explosion subsided and his body could move, he pulled himself out of the cloak and took three steps back.
His mind was so confused by the fierce impact that he couldn’t move forward.
“Hoo… hoo… hoo….”
A lukewarm liquid flowed down his left temple.
Was it because he was late in lowering his head into the cloak?
The helmet was split and tumbled to the floor, and a heavy dull pain belatedly rang in the side of his head.
In addition, it seemed like his left eardrum was gone.
He turned his gaze and glanced at his bracelet, and all three clovers remained.
Should he have just trusted his luck and rushed in?
The accumulation of injuries was not beneficial.
“——, ———-, ———.”
Bianca’s figure, rambling on and on.
But because of the sharp tinnitus, he couldn’t hear a word she was saying.
“————. ——Since you signed the contract, this is our stage. Now that you’re here, you can’t run away. Neither you nor I.”
It seemed that his eardrum being gone was thankfully a misunderstanding.
If he could hear Bianca’s voice chattering in the still muffled tinnitus.
“…….”
“Takasho was too loud. You’re too quiet.”
“Because you’re not worth answering.”
The reason he played along with Bianca’s ploy to provoke him by mentioning Takasho was because he needed to recover.
None of the weapons Bianca had used so far could be called ‘artifacts’.
They were just slightly enhanced, common, mass-produced conventional weapons.
If you were to calculate the total amount of firepower she could handle, it would be at the level of a toy.
“You’re trembling at the sight of mere toys, yet you’re telling me to risk my life? Your joke is too much.”
He was already in this state because of those toys.
His cloak and armor had absorbed the impact, so he had survived, but it was proof of the vast gap between them.
This was the power of a 22nd-tier public enemy.
Even after growing considerably and arming himself with three ceremonial dresses, the difference in level was endless.
But.
He knew that much.
Nothing would change even if he confirmed it again.
“How about surrendering quietly? You seem to like sex. If you cooperate well with the experiments, I’ll let you flounder under my skirt. Your face is pretty decent, so you’re my type.”
Still, he had gained one piece of information from the previous clash.
Bianca planned to capture him alive.
If she had wanted to take his life, she would have poured the remaining bullets into him while he was still disoriented from the Claymore.
If that had happened, all three of his clover leaves might have been blown away in an instant.
In fact, the fact that she was confronting him at this distance was proof that Bianca was looking down on Siwoo and had no intention of killing him.
If she had intended to kill him from the start, she could have subdued him with a world-shaking bombardment from a distance that Siwoo couldn’t even identify.
“The only thing I’ll give you is this.”
He held out his spear, aiming it at Bianca.
“I’ll pass, I don’t like things that long, they hurt.”
Behind Bianca, who was joking, a diamond-shaped metal plate floated up.
It was about the size of a palm, but four eyeballs were rolling around at each corner.
There it was.
The first of the five ceremonial dresses written in the records.
‘The Eye of Ideological Observation’.
It pierces through the target’s past, present, and future, assisting the caster’s aim.
Not only that, but if it had observed a target once, it could accurately snipe it even if it was hundreds of kilometers away. In other words, it was an aimbot that included a wallhack.
Siwoo’s body, which had been half-crouched, exploded forward.
A heavy footprint was imprinted at the point where the initial leap began, and the gap that had started at 50 meters narrowed again.
He had to get close no matter what.
If the battle turned into a long-range engagement, he wouldn’t be able to find even a shred of a chance to win.
He folded his ribbons and sprayed out particle-form shadows like wings, propelling himself forward with full power.
-Bang bang bang bang!
The sharp precision of Bianca’s aim, which had been just aimed shots until just now, had become sharp.
Each shot was aimed at a vital point.
They flew in at angles and timings that were impossible to avoid.
The best way to deflect the force of a straight line was rotation.
Siwoo’s body rotated like a top, and at the same time, the cloak he had pulled in covered his armor.
With the rotation added to the already excellent defensive performance.
-Kiiing! Kiiing! Kiiing!
Along with the roar of grinding metal with a grinder, fragments of ricocheted bullets scattered.
The moment his rotating feet firmly touched the ground.
-Kooong!
With a true kick that shook the hull, Siwoo’s body re-accelerated.
The power, gathered and condensed without wasted force, was twice as fast as before.
The sudden change in speed, which he had hidden for this one move, deflected even the last bullet.
He was only a step or two away from the spear’s range.
“I told you, I’ll pass.”
-Woong! Woong! Woo-woong!
The red spear, which had been reaching straight for his heart, stopped futilely in front of a silver shield.
It was a bizarrely strange sight.
The tip of the spear, which had been breaking the air beyond the speed of sound, had come to a sudden stop as soon as it touched a shield that was only the size of two palms.
There was no impact from the collision, no aftermath, nothing.
It was as quiet as if the spear had been touching the shield from the beginning.
The shield that had blocked the spear strike orbited around Bianca as if it had fulfilled its duty.
The second ceremonial dress that existed in the records.
‘The Shield of Vitege’.
A superior concept of autonomous defense.
An absolute defense shield that turns all external energy to zero.
If the backup of ‘The Eye of Ideological Observation’ was added to that, Bianca Bellili would have no blind spots.
Not yet.
The stopped spear blade moved.
The spear shaft and blade, drawing an arc and ceaselessly striking the Shield of Vitege, tore through the air with a menacing sound.
However.
Even though he was clearly unleashing a barrage of attacks, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was dancing in the air.
This was because there was no collision sound, no shockwave, and no recoil felt in his hand.
While Bianca didn’t even lift a finger, the Shield of Vitege was blocking all of his attacks.
The faint distortion field that was formed at the tip of the spear did not have a significant impact on the ceremonial dress enhanced by Bianca’s magical power.
“How long are you going to keep doing that?”
Bianca smiled faintly and took out a fan.
It had a fluffy appearance with white feathers.
“Could you step back a little?”
The moment it lightly fluttered.
A bizarre phenomenon that transcended perception occurred.
A fan of that size wouldn’t have been able to withstand the wind pressure created by Siwoo’s violent movements.
Nevertheless, the moment he felt the wind touching his cheek,
the distance he had barely narrowed was pushed back further than before.
This was Bianca’s third ceremonial dress.
‘The Saintly Poet’s Fan’.
Even if he managed to stand in front of Bianca after breaking through the barrage of fire and long-range sniping, it would be meaningless.
With that fan that could push the distance between them far away with just one wave.
Magic with destructive power that was difficult to handle one by one accurately struck his vitals.
Even if he barely managed to break through the distance, a flawless shield was waiting for him, and if he hesitated even for a moment, the distance would be widened again, and he would have to return to the first phase.
“Do you need to do more? I think I’ve shown you enough.”
Bianca fanned herself lightly, as if she was already tired of the series of fights.
However, for both Siwoo and Bianca.
They had only just finished their reconnaissance.
They would unilaterally intercept him from a distance.
If he got close, they would block him with a fraudulent defense.
Then, they would move him away again.
Was there a way to break through this seemingly flawless, perfect pattern?
“Not yet.”
For Takasho, and to grasp his lifeline.
It was too early to give up.
There was more he could do.
What he needed for that was magical power, magical power, and even more magical power.
“Bloom.”
Siwoo’s golden eyes once again became a vortex, absorbing the surrounding magical power.
