Chapter 146
Chapter 146
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 146
Chapter Title: The Debtor Witch
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"Hey! I don't know where you crawled out from, but that's mine!"
A sharp, irritable voice rang out behind Siwoo as he stared puzzled at the homunculus that was dying without him even laying a hand on it.
Siwoo whipped around in a hurry.
This place was still enveloped in the inner barrier.
A woman's voice echoing from within could only belong to a witch, of course.
When he turned his head, there stood a woman in an outfit that didn't betray his expectations.
She was perched precariously atop the fence installed to prevent suicides, like some kind of stunt, with the glittering nightscape as her backdrop.
Raindrops bounced off the pointed conical hat that was as good as a uniform for European witches.
A green sapphire at the tip of her long wand, adorned with fresh flowers, glowed with mana.
Beyond that, a robe draped over her shoulders and a black petticoat covering the insides of her exposed thighs.
Up to this point, it was standard witch attire one might see often in Gehenna, but her shoes were a bit different.
Whether for mobility or some personal fashion flair, she wore riding boots that climbed up to her calves.
It felt a touch out of place, yet somehow it suited her, so she pulled it off nicely.
Sincheon Station rooftop, and a witch at that.
In Gehenna, he'd seen it without a second thought, but now it felt like stumbling into a cosplay photoshoot.
Not that Siwoo, wrapped head to toe in plate armor, had much room to talk...
"Ugh!"
The witch hopped down from the fence with a thud and winced slightly as she stepped into a puddle.
Water must have seeped into her boots.
"See that? Wound on the side. I made it. So either fight me here or get lost—your call."
The witch jabbed her wand toward him threateningly, her voice dripping with hostility, then gestured with her chin.
Until then, her face had been obscured by the backlight and the shadow of her hat, but now that it was visible, Siwoo jolted in surprise.
No wonder her silhouette had seemed familiar.
Her hair was a mix of deep green and turquoise, blended just right.
That alone was enough to guess her identity.
The pretty mixed-race part-timer from the convenience store on the first floor of that apartment complex, who rang him up half-heartedly.
The world was disgustingly small.
Thinking back to how carelessly he'd checked out in front of a witch left him shivering for no reason.
But how was he supposed to predict this?
What witch works part-time at a convenience store?
If she'd been the manager, maybe it would've made more sense.
"Oh? Not moving?"
The witch swished her wand at Siwoo, who was frozen in shock, like shooing away an annoying bug.
Siwoo quickly backed away.
But he didn't lower his longsword or shield.
This was his first time facing a witch in the human world.
Though he'd heard it endlessly, the fact that he—a man—could use magic was bound to draw excessive interest from other witches.
She might attack out of nowhere under the pretext of securing a valuable specimen.
"Please... let something good come out... something good..."
But the witch brushed past Siwoo and, in a manner utterly at odds with her prim witch garb, squatted down like a local thug. She delivered the finishing blow to the homunculus and rummaged through its corpse.
Eh?
Come to think of it, her reaction was pretty ordinary.
The twins and Sophia had all been fairly surprised when they first saw Siwoo using magic.
Yet this stranger acted like it was no big deal, utterly unfazed.
Could it be...
Siwoo unconsciously touched the helmet covering his face down to his nose.
Of course his figure wouldn't show through the plate armor, and he hadn't spoken a word.
Half his face was hidden too.
In other words, the witch currently mistook him for just another witch hunting homunculi.
From a common-sense standpoint, it was the perfectly reasonable conclusion.
The odds of a man building up enough prowess to challenge a homunculus were far lower than it being a tall fellow witch.
"Haa... strikeout again. What now..."
Siwoo watched her sigh like a racecourse regular who'd lost his last bet.
If he kept the helmet on and slipped away quietly, maybe he could escape without any trouble?
He wanted no unnecessary conflicts.
"Hey."
"........."
The witch's voice stopped Siwoo as he tried to creep sideways toward the rooftop exit.
Honestly, he agonized over whether to bolt right then.
Unlike his slave days of mere parlor tricks, Siwoo had undergone a complete metamorphosis, reaching a pinnacle realm unattainable in a single generation.
If he were some shonen manga protagonist, he might think, "Time to test how much stronger I've gotten!"
But not Siwoo.
This untimely encounter with a witch felt utterly unwelcome.
He sighed inwardly, unable to muster a reply, and turned toward her with his head bowed low.
She approached, splashing through puddles.
"Why so jumpy? Who's gonna eat you? I'm not that kind of witch."
Siwoo felt a tangle of inexplicable emotions as she casually slapped his shoulder.
He knew from Yebin that not all exiles were bad witches, but he wasn't naive enough to trust someone on a single word.
She was friendly now, thinking he was a witch, but who knew when she'd turn if she learned he was a rare male?
"........."
"From the looks of it, you're not a local around here... How long ago were you exiled to the human world?"
"........."
This was bad.
A lengthening conversation was an ill omen.
At the convenience store, she'd seemed utterly exhausted, radiating "I couldn't care less about you people."
Even as he signaled "I don't wanna talk!" with silence, her affability showed no bounds.
Was approaching so defenselessly even called affability?
Doing this in the human world, not Gehenna, meant she had serious confidence in her skills.
"You're hunting homunculi to turn them in at Witch Points for bounties, right?"
"........."
Witch Points? Bounties? First time hearing that.
The witch chattered on in front of him.
Even through the pounding rain, a fragrant scent reached him.
It matched exactly the aroma from the store checkout, confirming she was that part-timer.
"Sorry, but Sinchon, Hongdae area—this is my hunting ground. Poaching isn't cool. I'll let it slide this time since you didn't know, but try stealing my prey again, and I'll make you pay with your skills."
"........."
For now, he nodded.
His decisions were slow, but regrets came fast.
He should've just run without looking back.
"Got it. I was lost when I first got here too. No ID, no money, no info. Compared to Gehenna, it's a total dump."
"........."
"Which is why—wanna hear about a good way to make money? You need cash to settle here anyway."
Money talk from a stranger.
She was definitely the type to avoid.
"Ever heard of blockchain tech—huh?"
Her chit-chat trailed off oddly.
Mint-green eyes trembled before Siwoo's, half-hidden by his helmet.
Even in this tense moment, he'd never seen eyes that color before—kinda fascinating.
"You're that eyepatch guy who comes for cigs every day? But... magic...? No, wait, what? You're a guy?"
The witch backed away in confusion, and Siwoo did the same.
His priorities: secure safety through talk, escape, fight—in that order.
Siwoo released his shadow gauntlet and immediately raised the Gemernai family ring.
The one Albireo gave him, proving he was a guest of the Gemernai countess house.
"See this? I'm from the Gemernai family..."
"W-Wait a sec!"
And it worked like a charm.
The moment she saw the ring on his raised finger, her face drained of color.
"I-I'll have the money soon. Wasn't trying to stiff you... Just delay this quarter's payment a week... no, two weeks..."
Her earlier bravado vanished; she cowered and stammered.
What was this now?
Siwoo stared at the new witch in bewilderment.
Somehow, her rain-soaked figure, which had seemed poetic moments ago, now looked utterly pathetic.
2.
"You're not here for the money, huh. I thought you were a servant sent by Countess Gemernai to collect."
"Nothing like that."
"Phew... my life really..."
The witch she'd run into by chance introduced herself as Sharon Evergreen.
Now changed from her soggy witch robes into casual jeans and a t-shirt, they chatted at a bus stop where the last ride had already left.
To cut to the chase, she wasn't one of the "dangerous exile types."
Moreover, she was a witch Siwoo had heard about before.
The great incident in Border Town's Cloud Mushroom Village: the "Sprout Rebellion."
One witch's experiment went haywire, super-growing acorns everywhere, wiping out nearby workshops and homes in the process.
When he'd first heard the story, he'd thought, "What an airheaded witch."
Never dreamed he'd meet the culprit one-on-one in the human world.
"So you're paying off debt to regain your citizenship?"
That was the final reason Siwoo deemed Sharon relatively safe.
For Gehenna witches, citizenship was like nationality back home.
Those curious witches toed the line in their magic research to avoid exile, so one scrambling to restore her citizenship wouldn't cross it, he figured.
Plus, with the Gemernai countess house—big influencers even in the Tree of Sephirot—backing his status...
"Yeah..."
The fact her exile wasn't for reckless magic research or civilian murders helped too.
"How much debt we talking?"
"...Around 58 billion 8842 million won in Korean currency?"
An astronomical sum that made him gasp.
"No way—just smashing up a neighborhood gets you that much?"
He'd have bought it for Tarot Town, but Border Town wasn't even that pricey.
Even wrecking a whole village block—did it really balloon to that insane figure?
She got hosed, didn't she?
"The witches whose workshops and research got blown away filed a class-action suit... Can we drop the debt talk? Makes my stomach churn."
Sharon's shoulders slumped like trampled snow.
The downpour that had blanketed the night city like a curtain had passed.
The starry sky shone clear overhead before he knew it.