Chapter 741 – #158_The Escape (4)
#741
1.
The door slammed shut.
The key they had painstakingly created had served its purpose.
The smoke screen no longer concealed Siwoo’s position.
It seemed the concealment barrier that Manya and Rinne had erected had also been analyzed, as the Great Witches who had been observing the situation from above began to intervene directly.
-Clang! Clang! Clang!
Iron stakes fell from the sky, piercing the ground and standing tall.
The stakes were connected by long chains, forming a symbol and a magical construct.
Just as the stakes, having absorbed the surrounding magic at a terrifying rate, were about to explode with light…
-Clang!
A guillotine blade, thrown by another witch, precisely severed the chain between the stakes.
The magic that the stakes and chains had formed unraveled, emitting a high-frequency sound resembling a death rattle.
If someone raised a massive fire, someone else would erect a water barrier to counteract it.
If someone created nets and snares, someone else would cut the threads with blades of wind.
As predicted, they were interfering with each other’s plans.
There were hardly any direct attacks, but the aftereffects of magic colliding with magic were devastating.
-Boom! Ka-boom! Ka-boom!
Dignity Town began to burn fiercely, as if it were experiencing the London Blitz.
It was chaotic, like rolling through a barrage of fire.
The low-ranking witches of Dignity Town were seen fleeing in disarray as the full-scale offensive began.
“Siwoo.”
Rinne stepped in front of the frozen Siwoo.
She had noticed from his expression that things had gone wrong.
Not only Rinne, but all the participants in this escape drama sensed the end was near.
“Don’t give up.”
Rinne’s tone, rather than grasping at vague hope in the face of a hopeless situation, was filled with conviction.
Siwoo, who had held onto hope, felt his spirits sink again at Rinne’s next words.
“You can do it.”
“Beyond this…”
Siwoo shook his head.
The world wasn’t a novel where the protagonist’s circumstances always worked out, and miracles weren’t convenient devices that appeared when needed.
To Siwoo, who had given up on everything, Rinne said,
“It was a wretched life.”
“……”
“I have taken many lives. Trapped in arrogance and self-righteousness, when I closed my eyes, the death cries of those I had turned into vengeful spirits never ceased.”
“……”
“I struggled with an unfillable void, living each day like a ghost.”
Her small hand covered the back of Siwoo’s hand.
“And then I met you. I felt the warmth, showed my embarrassing side, and experienced the happiness of being together.”
Siwoo realized belatedly that it sounded like a farewell.
“If I hadn’t met you, I wouldn’t have felt the heart-pounding excitement. I would have died like a beast, a wolf too exhausted to even pant. Just a beast.”
After hesitating for a moment, Rinne smiled at Siwoo for the first time.
It was a ticklish smile he had never seen before.
“I love you. I will give this fleeting life for you.”
In Rinne’s long life, her meeting with Siwoo was but a fleeting moment.
If life were a 24-hour day, it would have been a moment that didn’t even last a few seconds.
Yet, she was happy.
Enough to make it a reason to die for him.
“So, I’ll take care of this place. While I buy time, find a way to return to the arms of the lover who awaits you. That’s my last request to you.”
“Master…!”
Rinne turned her back without waiting for an answer.
She charged towards the enemies, abandoning her previous position of being chased.
A reckless challenge against such powerful foes.
Her body was not in good condition to fight her last battle.
As Yebin Smirna had said, she felt pain as if her body was breaking every time she swung her sword.
She probably wouldn’t last even 10 seconds.
But she would somehow buy more than a minute.
“Slash.”
Even though such a future was vividly clear, the emotion that spread through her heart was strangely, a joy that Rinne’s mind couldn’t comprehend.
It wasn’t the joy born from the arrogance and self-righteousness she had felt before.
It was the joy of having one last thing to do for her beloved family.
Even though she was physically moving away from him, the warm feeling, as if it were attached to her heart, was telling her that she wasn’t alone, and it seemed to make Rinne even stronger.
2.
The last time Rinne had bought for them.
A black and white magic field spread widely around Rinne.
The black and white world, which had always left a perfect black and white contrast, was not performing at its full capacity.
It was impossible to absorb all the colors of magic emitted by so many.
If Siwoo had been alone here, he might have given up.
He would have remained in despair, waiting to be kidnapped and imprisoned.
But Siwoo was not alone.
There were six people he had to take responsibility for.
“……”
The final escape route was closed, and the last key was gone.
The enemy was powerful, and time was running out.
But so what?
“Damn it, has it ever been easy?”
Rinne was right.
It was too early to give up.
Siwoo still had the role of rescuing Rinne and escaping.
He re-evaluated the situation and reviewed all available abilities.
There must be a way.
His ability to accelerate his thoughts explosively, splitting each moment, made his perceived time slow down.
But Siwoo’s Ein had no solution.
The dimensional transfer device he had been designing and building for five years had never considered the possibility of the ‘door’ closing.
“Ah…”
At that moment, the existence of the Red Branch and Lydia flashed through his mind.
More precisely, the conceptual magic she wielded.
Siwoo had only used the Red Branch’s distortion field as a ‘magically lethal radioactive field.’
However, as the Red Knight, the original owner of the Red Branch, had shown, the use of ‘distortion’ to manipulate concepts was limitless.
It could mix the principles of life and death to create an immortal army that would resurrect even after death.
It could turn a narrow rainwater tunnel into a space comparable to a large plaza.
It could distort the distance between Elloa and Siwoo to separate them.
A versatile artifact that could achieve anything if its range of application was expanded.
The Red Branch that Siwoo was wielding was not even 50% of its original performance.
But there was a reason for this.
Siwoo wasn’t an idiot, and he had tried to use this distortion ability several times.
The problem was that conceptual magic was diametrically opposed to Siwoo’s existing style.
It was a realm of intuition and senses, not calculation and reason.
The way to handle the ambiguous concepts was too different from Siwoo’s systematized magic, which was rooted in his background as a mathematician.
And now, Siwoo had witnessed the battle between Rinne and Lydia.
Of course, it was impossible to understand just by glimpsing a 23rd-tier magic.
Nevertheless, it was important that he had witnessed the framework of how to handle concepts.
Then, wasn’t it possible?
It wasn’t necessary to freely manipulate all concepts of distortion.
For example, what if he could temporarily distort a door that was originally closed to be in an ‘open state’?
“This is…”
Siwoo, who had been immersed in his own world, felt a thrill.
A realization towards a new realm he was facing in the face of an unprecedented crisis.
The ‘Ein,’ which had undergone a transformation, shook, and a precarious staircase appeared before Siwoo.
The golden staircase that reached the sky was Siwoo’s image and philosophy reflected in his Ein.
Even if it was reckless, even if he was a weakling compared to the powerful enemy.
Not giving up hope and struggling….
A fight for life.
Siwoo instinctively realized.
This staircase was dangerous.
If he were to slip or the stairs were to crumble, he would surely fall endlessly into the abyss that lay beneath the golden staircase.
Nevertheless, he reached out and ran without hesitation.
With each step he took, his thoughts expanded, like widening the horizon covered in thick fog.
Inspirations and realizations that he had not been able to recognize and understand, and had disappeared into his subconscious as fragments, floated through the darkness of oblivion.
It was a concentration that far exceeded the human capacity for information filtering.
As he suffered from a headache that felt like his synapses were burning, it became unclear whether he was climbing the stairs or simply running on flat ground.
3.
Only one minute had passed since the fight began.
“Huff…. Huff….”
Rinne’s body was a mess.
In fact, this in itself was close to a miracle that Rinne had created by utilizing her extensive combat experience.
Based on her explosive propulsion, she had penetrated the neutral zone where the hardliners and moderates were in a subtle power struggle.
She had cleverly guided the lines of fire so that if she used strong magic, it would cause damage to other factions, thus buying time.
But these actions were only to buy time.
-Whoosh!
A sharp spear flew towards Rinne’s side, where the blood on her eyelids had hardened, making it difficult for her to open her eyes properly.
She identified it, but her arms wouldn’t move.
Rinne tried to twist her body to avoid being killed instantly by the attack.
-Ka-boom!
With a thunderous sound, the spearhead flashed and veered off course.
Rinne, who had never imagined there would be any help, saw a witch in a nun’s habit.
“Dorothy…?”
“I owe you one? I don’t know if the day to repay it will ever come~”
She winked lightly and gave a bold smile.
Dorothy immediately swung her sword, deflecting the converging spears.
Dorothy, who boasted absolute defense, would be able to buy more time than Rinne.
“A witch of the Way?”
“Why is Dorothy here…?”
“It doesn’t matter, kill them both!”
The witches were agitated by the sudden betrayal, but it was clear that they were still outnumbered.
Dorothy and Rinne were both on the defensive.
“It wouldn’t look good to be cornered right after making a grand entrance~”
Amidst the surging magic and the Great Witches who had left their backs exposed for the sake of that magic.
-Swoooooosh!!!
It rained.
A dense stream of water, incomparable to the occasional downpours of Hexennacht, covered the entire Dignity Town.
A thick curtain of rain, where water filled the mouth and nose just by breathing, enveloped the town.
“What is this?”
“A magic field…?”
Moreover, it wasn’t just simple raindrops.
Although it had almost no killing power, each drop was a particle magic with a powerful abrasive ability.
Each time it made contact, the defense system was destroyed like sugar cubes melting in hot coffee.
Even the autonomous defense was no exception.
From those who had just reached the 20th tier to some of the 23rd-tier witches, their autonomous defenses were being chipped away without exception.
This caused more confusion than it seemed.
An unidentified, unknown magic had neutralized their defensive capabilities.
This could be the work of the moderates, the hardliners, or an internal traitor.
It had amplified the tension between the enemies, who were already wary of each other, to the maximum.
“Alright! Let’s get out of here!”
Taking advantage of the gap, Dorothy wrapped her arm around Rinne’s waist and descended vertically.
The enemies did not notice that there was a blonde witch following behind them.
