Chapter 934 – #203_Crossroads(3)
#928
1.
A pitch-black crossroads.
In the middle of a sticky darkness, two witches met two witches.
The two groups, having almost reached their destination at full speed, stopped as soon as they faced each other.
Whether it was a coincidence or an inevitability manipulated by someone’s intervention didn’t matter.
They instinctively sensed the prelude to an unavoidable, fierce battle.
The spoils buried here were too precious to hand over to the enemy.
“Well, who do we have here? Isn’t that Rinne? I heard you eloped with your husband. Fancy meeting you in a place like this. It’s a bit gloomy for a honeymoon, wouldn’t you say?”
“Is, is that a male witch next to her?”
Urshula’s one eye curved like a crescent moon.
Her long tongue licked her thin lips.
Urshula hadn’t expected another witch to be in this pocket space.
But she wasn’t greatly surprised.
Lilis’s notoriety was well-known even among the public enemies.
If there hadn’t been any significant obstacles on the shortcut that viper of a woman had provided, it would have been more unsettling.
The Sword Witch, Rinne.
The male witch who defeated the Silent Witch, Rosie Allu, in her workshop.
That was more than enough to serve as the ‘obstacle’ Lilis had intended.
“You guys came for the gate too, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Okay, then let’s do this. The situation is pretty urgent, right? Let’s all four of us join forces and get the gate first. Making a fuss here might not be a good idea. Then we can go out and decide what to do.”
“……”
“We didn’t expect things to get this messed up either. If you offer a reasonable price, we might just quietly concede and leave.”
This was the first time Siwoo had seen Urshula in person.
He hadn’t seen her even when he was in Hexennacht.
He had only watched her slaughter tens of thousands of soldiers in propaganda videos.
Was that why?
Urshula’s logical proposal felt even strange.
A woman who suggests a detour when faced with a disadvantageous situation kills people like squashing ants.
Nevertheless, it was hard to say that he wasn’t tempted by the proposal itself.
It wasn’t because he was afraid of fighting or trusted those two.
It was because he was worried about his master, who was left alone.
Instead of starting an unnecessary fight here, he should get the gate first and join Eloa.
If they could avoid a fight by paying a reasonable price, wouldn’t that be the most efficient solution right now?
For a moment, such a temptation crept in.
“Y, yeah…! You, you guys saw it too, right? How this damn city treated witches. We’ll give you the gate! Kill, kill them all! Turn them into homunculus food!”
“Priscilla agrees too. What’s your decision, Rinne?”
Rinne didn’t explain at length.
-Sreung
She simply drew her short sword and long sword from her waist and aimed them.
It was a clear and unequivocal hostile stance without the need for further explanation.
The dim reflection of magical power began to seep into her eyes, which pierced through the darkness.
“Husband, get behind me.”
“Oh dear…. What a pity? We were once old comrades.”
Urshula looked at Rinne with a gloomy gaze, as if she was regretful.
It was filled with the sadness of having to fight a former friend as an enemy due to irreconcilable goals.
Did they have some kind of camaraderie among the public enemies?
Just as he was thinking that.
“Heh.”
Urshula’s lips twisted with a short exhale.
The deep sadness and regret that had been present fell away like cracked makeup,
and a cruel smile spread through the gaps.
“Hmm, Rinne is still Rinne, after all. I wondered if she had gone soft. She hasn’t lost her edge?”
“Haha! Hahaha!”
Priscilla burst into laughter, clutching her stomach.
It was as if the temporary alliance proposal had been a lie, and there had never been any room for compromise from the start.
Rinne whispered quietly, in a tone that completely ignored them.
“Those two are dangerous.”
For such words to come from the mouth of the dangerous Rinne.
Siwoo had no choice but to brace himself.
“Well. It’s not that we’re dangerous. Isn’t it that those who would willingly back down with such top-quality goods are idiots?”
“That’s right, that’s right. The bonus is, like, so huge.”
It was indeed an obvious story.
Even if they had suffered some losses after meeting the Angel, Urshula and Priscilla were both 22nd rank.
Moreover, both of them were veterans who had survived the war between Qliphoth and Gehenna, with combat experience that was more than abundant.
On the other hand, Rinne was an excellent fighter, but she had a weakness called Shin Siwoo.
If they were to face off in a 2-on-2 battle, the advantages and disadvantages would be clearly divided, and the merit of winning was too obvious.
The first male witch in history with power comparable to a Great Witch.
The Red Branch, considered a heinous artifact, as a free gift.
If they were lucky enough to capture them alive, even a 22nd-rank witch.
Spoils that might be worth as much as or more than the gate.
A witch who valued her own safety might have reconsidered the battle, taking the risk into account.
However, Urshula and Priscilla were the type to willingly walk a tightrope for the sake of extreme gain.
Even if they suspected that this might be Lilis’s design.
“Priscilla, you take Rinne.”
“What? Why? No, I don’t want to. I want to play with the male witch too.”
“You idiot. You can’t control your power. Just hold out. I’ll finish up quickly and help you.”
“Uuuu, okay.”
The two public enemies had even made up the matchups as they pleased.
“Husband, I’ll handle this.”
“I can’t allow that.”
There were two public enemies of the 22nd rank.
No matter how strong Rinne was, it was impossible for her to fight 2-on-1.
Also, the two people who would bring disaster without any room for negotiation when they got the gate were here.
There was no reason for Siwoo to leave Rinne alone and go first, except for his own self-preservation.
“Don’t worry. I won’t go down easily either.”
He reinforced his armor more firmly and gripped his spear.
The training he received from Teacher Sua was short.
However, Siwoo had succeeded in partially recreating the infinite possibilities he had seen in Happy Pig’s dream.
Although incomplete, he had also prepared proper insurance.
Even if the opponent was a formidable foe, he had no intention of going down without a fight.
“Your courage is commendable. Let’s see your skills?”
The ground trembled.
Black spheres that floated one by one next to Urshula caused light to refract.
A great magic that modifies the settings of the world.
The immense power that could easily collapse an underground space was making the ground itself creak.
“Huuuuuuuuuup!!!!”
Magical power was sucked into Priscilla’s wide-open mouth.
In an instant, the magical power concentration in the atmosphere approached zero.
The powerful suction that tried to pull in even self-magnetized magical power was truly worthy of the name ‘Gluttonous Witch’.
“Pahaaaaaaaa!!!!”
The magical power that had been pulled in and compressed to its limit was amplified.
Amplified and amplified, it became an immense firepower that could not normally exist, and it engulfed Rinne.
A simple and crude but deadly magic cannon that was so powerful.
-Chwaaaaaak!
Rinne rushed towards Priscilla, cutting through the space between them.
Her sword drew a beautiful spiral that crossed the line between life and death.
The underground battle had begun.
2.
“Yeah. This is more like a tower than a building.”
Lydia arrived at the tallest tower in the city.
It was just a hunch, but Lydia’s hunches never betrayed her expectations.
A stroke of luck that couldn’t be explained by individual excellence always followed Lydia.
Perhaps it was a destiny given to her from birth.
“It’s the same with the dark dungeon in the basement.”
The underground laboratory she reached as her feet led her had prepared exactly what Lydia had hoped for.
No, perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a production factory rather than a laboratory?
If you excluded the minimum management personnel, it was a fully mechanized production facility, and it would be awkward to attach any other expression than a factory.
-Tick tock tick tock
Satisfied with the cleaner hygiene than the basement, Lydia walked through the darkness where no one was around.
The lighting was kept to a minimum, whether for energy saving or because it wasn’t needed.
Even this was better than that nasty subway.
“Wow….”
Humans have a strange belief.
They believe that the birth of life is sacred and that technology that interferes with it is blasphemy that encroaches on the realm of God.
Honestly, she didn’t intend to agree with such an opinion.
But after looking around the factory, she could see why.
“I can see why you might feel repulsed.”
Glass walls lined up on both sides.
On one side, there were rows of identical bodies in large cylindrical tanks, like breeding pods.
Unlike the ‘Angel’, which was made of machines and parts, this side had real human bodies.
Perhaps they had used biological technology to clone witches.
And on the other side of the glass wall, there were mechanical prosthetics.
The intermediate process that connected them was truly grotesque.
The bodies with flesh were dissected piece by piece, and only the nerves and brains were extracted.
They were then inserted into mechanical devices that were no different from dolls.
It was an unholy scene even from the perspective of a witch, not just a human, but Lydia didn’t feel any particular repulsion.
Physiological repulsion was just an emotional factor that interfered with accurate profit and loss calculations.
Lydia only calculated value.
At the center of the last factory, a witch, presumed to be the source of all this creation of life, floated in the middle of a huge breeding pod.
The only witch with a ‘real brand’ among tens of thousands of incomplete witch replicas.
She was probably the mother of the Angel.
“Should I start by taking that one?”
Lydia, who had been walking briskly, soon encountered an obstruction.
It was an inevitable obstacle that would appear once she had come this far.
“This is the production facility of the Wychroid.”
“The entry of outsiders is subject to immediate disposal.”
It was the Great Witch weapon, the Angel, that she had seen so many times.
But their numbers were significantly smaller.
At most, a few thousand.
As expected, many of the troops were concentrated on the homunculus side.
“Warning. Retreat immediately.”
Lydia made one last calculation.
The opportunity cost of dealing with all the obstacles here.
The potential profit that would result from obtaining the Angel’s mother and Angel samples and conducting R&D.
“Hmm, the more samples, the better, right?”
It was just a habit to think of it before doing anything.
It was a calculation that was not worth comparing.
