City ​​of Witches 399

Chapter 399 – #86_Ball(6)

#397

1.
The clash of power that shook the heavens and earth had ended.

Bianca floated in the sky, looking down at the shipyard.
Or rather, should it be called ‘what was once a shipyard’?

The massive container ship, which had boasted a grand appearance, was shattered as if a meticulously crafted miniature had been thrown down.
The dock below was also riddled with holes and was now sinking into the sea.

Arc Heart’s bow, which folded space to shoot,
Its destructive power transcended the usual scales of physics, such as the law of conservation of mass.

Normally, the ship itself should have been annihilated.
Not only the ship, but the entire area should have been swept away by a storm and disappeared.

“……”

There was only one reason why that didn’t happen.
The runaway red branch, shot like a slingshot using a ribbon, and the powerful distortion field it created, caused a neutralizing reaction, resulting in a magical neutralization.

However, the difference in power was clear.
The night sky that Bianca shot down crushed the red flash as it was, causing it to fall.
It was impossible from the start for a hastily improvised spear to overcome a magically perfect, ultimate weapon.

In her observation of thoughts, she saw a man leaning against a steel structure, his head hanging low.
Bianca lightly flapped her wings, and her feet were already standing on the slowly sinking ship, which had been split in two.

“What a shame.”

The man, who had his head bowed like a corpse, did not react.

He was magnificent until the end.
He had intercepted the ultimate strike that no witch had ever blocked.

However, even Bianca, who didn’t have much talent in field magic, could see the extent of the danger.
He had been exposed to the powerful distortion field for too long.

His breathing had almost stopped, and even at this moment, his heart was slowly dying.
Bianca possessed an elixir that could instantly heal most injuries.
Bianca, who had briefly taken out an ampule to give it to him, put it back in her pocket.

Even with the elixir, that injury was too much.
He looked fine on the outside, but magically speaking, his inner spirit had turned into a mashed tofu.
Soon after, his heart stopped beating.
She would have to retrieve the red branch at least.

“Huh?”

The red branch was thrown far away.
An unbelievable thing happened before Bianca’s eyes as she was about to pick it up.

-Twitch

A very slight movement of a finger.
At first, she thought it was just residual electrical signals remaining in the muscles due to intense excitement.

His heart had clearly stopped.
She had observed with her observation of thoughts that his pupils, which were dimly facing the floor, had completely dilated.
He was already dead.
Then.

“Why is he moving?”

Bianca looked at Shin Siwoo.
Shin Siwoo also looked at Bianca.

2.
He sinks endlessly.
A vast and dark space.
Yet, the darkness that caresses his cheeks and wraps around his waist gave him a sense of comfort, as if he had returned to the womb.

Ain.
The first gateway of the three realms that does not manifest.
On that horizon, the history of magic that Siwoo had written shone like a massive structure.

His thoughts, which had been drifting like his body, returned.

Ah….

The reason for his bewildered sigh was that he remembered the night sky that had poured down as he swallowed the red branch at the last moment.

The shattering sound of magic that had torn the heavens and earth still seemed to echo in his ears, yet it was so quiet.
The incongruity was so chilling that it made him shudder.

Was this death?
Fading away into the distance.
He could see the magical structure that had become so distant.

“Ah…”

Only now did a voice come out of his mouth.
At the same time, he became aware.

The fight was over.
The result was defeat.
The price was his life.

It was a shame.
If only he had thought of shooting the red branch a little faster.
If only he had conserved his magic power a little more.
If only he had studied harder and achieved magical accomplishments.

Regrets and disappointments that kept piling up.
His consciousness sank and subsided again.

Then.
Siwoo noticed something unusual.

This place was Ain, a conceptual world that did not exist.
There was no way it could have an end.
Yet.
He could see the bottom.

The bottom that Siwoo had not recognized until now was as black as the surface of calm oil, and it was spread out wide as if it bisected this vast Ain.

His feet sank.
His calves sank.
As he went past the bottom that swallowed his waist, chest, and neck.

A reversed world was revealed.
Another Ain existed, as if the top and bottom were flipped, with the black surface as the boundary.

Dark shadows that constantly repeated changes.
The fierce clanging of a loom turning like a giant machine.
Elemental particles that bloomed and withered, fluttering incessantly.
A palace of memories made of stairs and doors, finitely spread out in the infinite Ain.
Strings of contracts clearly engraved in the sky.
A giant moon that governed the field.
A giant tree-shaped fractal extending from the sky to the ground, harmoniously encompassing all of it.

There was a man hanging upside down in a structure that was harmoniously beautiful beyond comparison to Siwoo’s.
He was Shin Siwoo.

15th level.
The realm where instinct and magic become one.
The survival instinct to live manifests in the form of autonomous defense, and self-harm by magic does not occur unless the caster intends it.

Shin Siwoo’s level had already surpassed the 15th level.
The reason why autonomous defense did not work for him.

His instinct had not recognized the crises so far as crises.
The moment Siwoo’s heart stopped.
He finally realized that he had to move.

With a roar, Ain flipped over.
The world, which had tilted from horizontal symmetry to vertical symmetry like a sinking ship,
flipped over once again to achieve horizontal symmetry.

God is cruel and does not give miracles.
Therefore, all miracles.

Must be a necessity created by the intersection of cause and effect.

3.
A witch is a being who wields mysteries.
The fact that a dead person comes back to life is not something to pay much attention to.

But his case was a little different.
Her observation of thoughts was definitely declaring Shin Siwoo’s death.
She had also thoroughly investigated that there were no other artifacts or devices for resurrection.

A mystery that occurred without relying on magic.
No matter how much Bianca pondered, she could not fathom how he was rising again, or how he could look at her.

“Amazing. You’re up? You still had something hidden?”

Black eyes, common among East Asians, and golden eyes that sparkled.
She met his heterochromatic eyes.
The inorganic eyes, devoid of any emotion, were like a deep abyss.

Bianca’s eyes narrowed.

“Who… are you?”

An aura where all emotions had been neatly removed.
It was different.
It was not an atmosphere that could change simply by changing one’s mindset.

A shiver ran down her spine without her realizing it.
When the armor that had been torn to shreds reconstructed itself, Bianca had already flapped her wings and soared into the night sky.
Dozens, no, hundreds of ribbons soared towards Bianca, who was submerged in the sky.

Her past combat experience, her observation of thoughts, and an instinct that could not be explained in words warned her.
Something was dangerous.

The Shin Siwoo that Bianca had fought so far had a strong feeling of somehow managing to get by.
If you look at each magnetic magic individually, it should be around the 18th level at best.
He had been assisting the magnetic magic, which was insufficient on its own, with another magnetic magic.

For example, shadows that were prone to losing their structure were used as ribbons through a loom, or their strength was increased with elemental magic and used as weapons.
Also, since a proper magical battle would not be a head-on power fight, he adopted the unorthodox method of close combat to balance things out.

In other words, he was an ambiguous opponent who was difficult to call a proper witch.

But this was different.
The structure of each ribbon was incomparably more elaborate and solid than before.
Although the number was small, the power itself was comparable to that of the prime-era Ea Sadalmelik.

Awakening after overcoming the crisis of death?
A new realization that came at the last moment?

That couldn’t be.
The world was not designed to be so kind and gentle.
Then how should she interpret the overwhelming difference in power, as if he had become a different person?

-Swish! Swish! Swish!

Ribbons that rushed towards Bianca as if each strand had its own will.
They were not just chasing her, but guiding her and cornering her as if they were laying a net in the air.

However, no matter how many there were, her observation of thoughts did not miss them.
The wings of Icarus, which flew faster than the incoming ribbons without even a single strand of hair being ruffled, easily shook off the pursuit.

There was no need to panic.
She still had plenty of magic power to spare.

Mach 30.
A world of extreme speed where objects 10km ahead passed behind her back in the blink of an eye.
At a speed where the human body would normally be crushed by the G-force generated during a sharp turn, Bianca drew Arc Heart’s bow.

Arc Heart’s bow could unleash more firepower than any other weapon Bianca possessed.
It consumed that much magic power, so Bianca could only shoot it three times without feeling burdened.

In other words, she had at least two shots left.

The bow was drawn to its limit, and the sky was bent once again.
The target was Shin Siwoo, who was manipulating the ribbons below.
The moment the night sky was about to be shot again.

-Whoosh!

As if they had been waiting for it, the ribbons that had been cutting through the air simultaneously drew circles with a diameter of hundreds of meters.
Connected end to end, they created a huge ring tunnel that gradually narrowed.

The dense golden magic formulas written on each ribbon were all for controlling the field.
The ribbons that formed circles in layers like coils, and the field emitted from them, were trying to block Bianca Belili’s best strike.

“Shoot!”

It was the second shot, but its power was unchanged.

-Screeeeeech!

A black arrow that cut through space.
As if they had been waiting for it, the ribbons resonated all at once, and the black arrow hesitated as if it had been caught in a net.

“What…?”

The arrow, which was fast enough to be impossible to outrun even with the wings of Icarus, was flying so slowly that it could be seen with the naked eye.
That alone was unbelievable to Bianca.
It meant that the arrow was being interfered with by the field.

Not the distortion field of the irregular weapon, the red branch.
Simply by an unidentified spell that was deployed on a scale that was ridiculously large.

The field that was trying to block it and the arrow that was trying to break through.
Each time the arrow moved forward, the ribbons around it burned red like filaments exposed to high-voltage current.
The arrow, which had hesitated as if it would stop, regained its speed and smoothly sucked into the ring tunnel.

She soon realized.
His goal from the beginning was not to completely block the attack.

-Kuwahhhh!

A roar that made her insides throb.
White sea spray that the sea had spewed out soared hundreds of meters.

Bianca clearly saw the series of events.
The ultimate strike was guided into the ring tunnel created by the ribbons and, unlike its intended target, was plunged deep into the sea.

“……”

How many times would she have the same thought?
Unbelievable.

Anyone could come up with the idea itself.
To guide a linear attack as if laying down a slide.
It was a strategy often used to block magic cannons even on position boards.

However, Bianca’s attack was not a simple magic cannon.
It was a strike that could completely annihilate even a 1km cube made of special alloy if it were in front of it.

And he simply deflected it by combining ribbons and field magic?
A precarious acrobatic feat that could take his life with even a slight miscalculation?

It was the act of a madman.
It was something that a sane person could not do.
Bianca was astonished and tried to find Siwoo.
Even amidst the scattering sea spray and the noise of magic power, her observation of thoughts quickly pinpointed his location.

Shin Siwoo, who had torn through space and appeared right behind Bianca, wielding the red branch.