Chapter 578 – #118_Betrayal(7)
#578
1.
I sometimes ask myself, pointlessly.
Like how you’re no longer curious about the backstory of a movie whose ending you already know.
It’s a truly trite and stale question every time I roll it around in my mouth.
Even so, when I ask.
What is life?
2.
There is no perfect magic in the world.
It could be because my knowledge is shallow and my experience is lacking, but at least the witches Siwoo has watched so far each had their own weakness.
For example, even his teacher had terrible fuel efficiency because she modified contract magic for combat, and in Bianca’s case, she specialized in long-range bombardment and tried to avoid close combat at all costs.
No matter how much the difference in hierarchy greatly affects combat, there was always a breakthrough to create variables.
Close combat is overwhelmed by the logic of power.
The highest firepower long-range attacks are blocked by feathers that are close to absolute defense.
Thus, it means that there must be the same gap in Dorothy, who at first glance seems like an impregnable fortress.
Dorothy walks over and swings her sword at Siwoo.
First, he deflects it.
-Clang!
Instead of countering with force like before, he used a slanted surface to deflect it with his spear.
“Oh my?”
Dorothy seems to have noticed that the feel is different.
The harder Siwoo swung, the more the reaction was transferred back, so there was no answer no matter how much she continued to face him head-on.
Therefore, he subdues the flow of power.
-Crack!
It wasn’t easy.
A force that would barely cancel out even if they collided head-on with all their might.
It’s practically impossible to deflect absolute power with technique.
Therefore, Siwoo actively used his feet.
In fact, he was only touching the weapons, bending his knees and twisting his body, avoiding the trajectory of the sword without blocking it.
And as expected, Dorothy couldn’t keep up with Siwoo’s movements.
This is one of the common characteristics of Dorothy’s combat patterns that she has been showing since earlier.
She doesn’t move nimbly.
At first, he thought it was just a show of leniency stemming from her composure.
But gradually, the magic formula began to come into view.
He interpreted the magic formula intricately written on the lining of her nun’s habit and came to a different conclusion.
Magic embodies mystery in exchange for magical power.
And a great witch who has exceeded the 20th level goes beyond simply embodying mystery and modifies the ‘settings’ of the world itself.
Folding the sky and shooting it as an arrow, making a promise that has the property of being achieved by itself, summoning a forgotten old god, making flowers bloom on a barren field….
Anyway, it becomes possible to perform such absurd miracles.
Similarly, Dorothy’s absolute power is the power to modify the fundamental laws of physics.
But as far as he has observed, the magic power consumed was too little compared to the ‘modification’ that Dorothy was performing.
If she used that much power, even a great witch should be exhausted and fall down quickly.
Then there is only one answer.
There are inevitable conditions and restrictions to maintain efficiency.
The three keywords to dig into the conditions are:
‘Nun’s habit’, ‘Angel’s appearance’, ‘Chapel’.
As you can see from these, Dorothy’s magic is magic that gains power through a symbolic system.
Even if it is a non-existent being, just as it gains power from overlapping history and mythology, isn’t it possible that Dorothy’s absolute power requires symbols?
What he paid attention to here was the nun’s habit and the chapel.
He scanned the flow of magic power focusing on them.
“You’re not getting tired of just dodging like that~ I can do this all day, you know?”
And he realizes.
Dorothy was the pillar and axis of this chapel, mediated by her nun’s habit.
Not only in a magical sense, but also physically.
In other words, the reason why she can wield this overwhelming power recklessly.
The reason why the chapel doesn’t break from any impact.
The reason why her nun’s habit can exert tremendous defensive power.
All of these are miracles that are possible on the premise that she is standing on the ground and existing as a ‘pillar’.
Dorothy wasn’t adjusting her power to be lenient with Siwoo.
At least one of her feet had to be on the ground, so she couldn’t perform flashy movements.
She was hiding it by habitually showing her usual languid tone, slow movements, and relaxed fighting style, but….
He had definitely seen through it.
-Crack!
He deflects the attack again and this time extends his ribbon.
If he could make her unable to stand on the ground, her troublesome absolute power would be blocked.
Dorothy wasn’t agile enough to fend off the dozen or so ribbons that were coiling around her like snakes at close range.
But even though the powerful force of the ribbon, which could squeeze juice out of concrete, was constricting her whole body, her movements were not affected at all.
She didn’t seem to be in pain, or even frown.
No, she didn’t even seem to care in the first place.
“Is this kind of play your thing?”
Ignoring her meaningless joke, he tried to pull her up and throw her with all his might.
“Haaap!”
Dorothy’s face, which had been full of composure, stiffens.
But Dorothy is trying to stand on this earth.
She is also trying to move forward step by step.
As the name suggests, absolute power is absolute, so relativity does not exist.
Even if he pulled her body, which weighs only a few tens of kilograms, with a tensile force of tens or hundreds of tons, she would not move if Dorothy did not want to.
Dorothy herself knew this point better than Siwoo.
-Thud! Thud!
As expected, the ribbon was torn apart like a spider web, unable to overcome its own strength.
That’s why Dorothy was surprised by his attempt itself.
He was trying to separate Dorothy from the ground.
It meant that he had grasped the structure of Dorothy’s self-magnetism magic ‘Descent’ in that short moment.
Not a witch who has lived for hundreds of years and is experienced in combat, but a rookie who, in her eyes, is no different from a newborn baby.
“No way. Did you notice?”
But after a brief moment of shock, Dorothy smiles again with a relaxed smile.
It would be a great pity for him who had made an effort for once, but Dorothy’s magic was not the type that would reveal a flaw even if it was seen through.
In the end, to break down Dorothy, who has become a pillar, he has to take her feet off the ground, but in that state, absolute power is already in effect.
There is a fatal contradiction that in order to break through absolute power, he must ultimately overcome absolute power head-on.
“I’m pretty~ heavy, so it won’t work, you know?”
Certainly, news had spread that he had fought well against Bianca, so he was no ordinary opponent.
The witch of desire, who can only launch attacks from afar, would have had a hard time dealing with Siwoo, who was sticking to her so persistently.
After a brief impression, the development was a very boring power struggle from Dorothy’s point of view.
-Crack! Clang!
Dorothy, who was just pushing forward, and Siwoo, who was struggling to receive and deflect it.
It was mysterious that he could fight this far in a way that was closer to martial arts than magic, but….
That was it.
He was gradually running out of resources.
“This is really~ annoying. It’s even more annoying because I can’t kill you.”
His spear, which was struggling to receive the sword, was gradually going down.
As if it was too heavy to lift, the tip of the spear was already scraping the ground.
As he knew, it was no ordinary weapon.
Even though Dorothy was still standing on the ground, it was making scratches on the chapel.
Could it be that he is deliberately scraping the floor and trying to collapse the magic circle through the red reverse field?
But that’s not enough.
No matter how much he makes scratches, it was impossible to affect the spell that was spread throughout the vast chapel.
Could it be that he didn’t see through that far?
Or has he already noticed it, but is he planning to grind the entire floor of the chapel with the feeling of sharpening an axe to make a needle?
“Even if you stick to me like that, you can’t do anything~ More than that, please answer me~ I look like a crazy woman talking to myself.”
This time, Dorothy, who was somewhat forcefully swinging her sword at Siwoo’s midsection, suddenly found a sense of incongruity in her own monologue.
Come to think of it….
Why is he sticking so close?
She had taken it for granted because the situation was overwhelmingly advantageous.
But Shin Siwoo is not a fool.
No matter how confident he is in close combat, he also had a pretty decent long-range attack ability.
Is it really because of stubbornness that he is stubbornly sticking to close combat in this situation?
She looks into his eyes.
At the same time, she felt a chill down her spine.
His eyes, shining from within his black helmet, were not the eyes of a man who had given up fighting or was driven to despair.
They were the eyes of a predator lying in the bushes, watching his prey and calmly looking for an opportunity.
What did I miss?
Is there really a gap that he can aim for in this situation?
Even the strongest witch she had ever met could not attack Dorothy while breaking through her absolute defense.
She had never been injured, let alone bled.
If she only had fights like this, combat would become a very unexciting repetitive labor.
“Do not be afraid!”
Therefore, like her incantation, Dorothy has never been afraid of combat.
Not to mention Siwoo, who was clearly far below her.
And for Siwoo, who had crawled out of all sorts of predicaments and gained combat experience, such carelessness was a very good prey.
A pure white halo appears above Dorothy’s head, just like before.
A huge wing made of tens of thousands of feathers flutters, scattering magic power that is on a different level than before.
The complete form that even Dorothy cannot maintain for long because it consumes a vast amount of magic power despite having such difficult restrictions.
Dorothy’s idea was simple.
She didn’t know what he was intending, but if she pressed him down with more power, that would be it.
A clumsy trick will eventually break in front of an invincible shield.
Siwoo’s stance, which had been focused on defense, switched to offense.
At the same time, the feathers that flew in all directions from Dorothy’s wings slowly flew towards Siwoo.
At first glance, they look slow, but each feather is imbued with absolute power.
Even if a meteorite were to fly in front of them, it would fly silently with the same speed and power without any resistance.
As expected, his spear thrust, which had been unnaturally dodging the feathers, was aimed at the ground.
Watching the tip of the spear, which had been flying in an absurd trajectory, pierce into the ground, Dorothy was certain of victory.
“Got you.”
However.
The moment Siwoo punches the end of the spear he had stuck into the ground with all his might.
-Boom! Boom! Boom!
With three overlapping transverse waves, the ground collapsed.
On the ground that was broken like a piece of cheese that had passed through a cutting machine, there was no ground left for Dorothy to stand on.
Dorothy’s eyes widened in shock.
A red spark, like a geyser, soared up, fluttering her bangs.
It was a storm of condensed distortion that rose from the cracked ground.
The nun’s habit, which had briefly lost its footing and was unable to receive the protection of the chapel, could not resist the storm that could be called the nemesis of artifacts.
The feathers and angel’s halo that had appeared disappeared as quickly as they had appeared.
Siwoo, who spun around and pulled out his spear, took off his armor, which was crumpled like aluminum foil by the aftermath.
The spear was deeply embedded in Dorothy’s abdomen, which had exposed a gap in a completely defenseless state.
